Affiliates and high-intensity participation in Brazilian parties: opening the black box

• Grant number: 20/11888-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2021
• End date: October 29, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Behavior
• Principal Investigator: Pedro José Floriano Ribeiro
• Grantee: Filipe Vicentini Faeti
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/00139-0 - Party members and high-intensity participation in Brazilian parties: opening the black box, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

What conditions high-intensity engagement among affiliates? In a political scenario where parties do not enjoy much appreciation with people, what makes them dedicate part of their time to party activities? Is it possible to observe greater engagement and distinct patterns of activism among members socialized in democratic periods? To answer these questions, we used the first national survey with members and party leaders, investigating party engagement in Brazil in the light of the current theoretical debate and elaborating two dimensions of analysis still little faced by the literature: organizational and generational. In the first stage of the research, we have as hypotheses: 1) affiliates socialized in democratic periods are, in general, more engaged; 2) left-wing contaminated parties with a higher proportion of highly engaged affiliates. At this point, we examine through binomial logistic regression models the effect of constraints recognized by the literature, specifying variables linked to party associations and the period of socialization of its members. Then, we investigate how the nature of the activities to which they are engaged, internal or external, can be understood according to this analytical approach. Thus, the project aims to clarify how the authoritarian legacy and its reflexes on the socialization of affiliates may have contributed to different patterns of engagement. From the examination of a national sample, investigate how socialization in authoritarian periods can have traces on the way parties are organized in Brazil and in other countries that have experienced a past of ruptures in their democratic order. (AU)