Advanced search
Start date
Betweenand


The representatives of the states in the National Congress: social composition and political career of the Brazilian senators (1987-2007)

Full text
Author(s):
Luiz Domingos Costa
Total Authors: 1
Document type: Master's Dissertation
Press: Campinas, SP.
Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
Defense date:
Examining board members:
Rachel Meneguello; Leoncio Martins Rodrigues; Renato Monseff Perissinotto
Advisor: Rachel Meneguello
Abstract

This thesis presents a survey of the socio-political profile of the senators elected in the six latest elections for the upper chamber of Brazilian parliament. It covers the parliamentary elite that has occupied the Senate during the recent democratic period. Data were organized around the dimensions of the socio-occupational composition and political career and they served for two main analytical lines. First, an analysis state by state, which not only shows important differences observed between groups of parliamentarians of each state, but also registers the impact of sub-national competition in the configuration to the senators' profiles. Second, an analysis of aggregated data served for comparison between the patterns of socio-occupational composition and political careers of the senators with those of the deputies elected in the same period. The comparison led to the scrutiny of three hypotheses about the composition of the political class occupying Brazilian National Congress. One of these hypotheses was confirmed and two were refuted. The existence of distinct social backgrounds of political recruitment between distinct ideological (left, centre and right) groups of parliamentarians was verified for the Senate as well as for the Chamber of Deputies. However, differently from what was observed in the recent elections for the lower chamber, an incipient "popularisation" of the Brazilian political class could not be observed for the upper chamber. This fact indicates that the Senate presents more obstacles for this type of socio-political process. Finally, the range or volume of political career observed among deputies is very different from that of the senators, whose previous political expertise is far more substantive (AU)