Role of Subnational Political Actors in Shaping National Politics in Brazil

The article represents an analytical review of existing approaches in foreign literature to conceptualize and operationalize the role of subnational political actors in Brazilian national politics. The electoral cycles of 2018 and 2022 in Brazil demonstrated significant heterogeneity in voting results at the federal and subnational levels. In 2018, the victory of the leader of the far-right political forces, Jair Bolsonaro, was not fully supported by the results of the regional elections. On the contrary, the victory of the founder of the center-left party, Inacio Lula da Silva, in the national elections was associated with the absence of a majority in parliament for the president and the victory of right-wing parties, including the Liberal Party of Jair Bolsonaro. These forces have also won regional elections, and most of the current governors are also supporters of right-wing parties. Reliance on classical institutionalism in the case of Latin American countries does not represent current interaction of political forces at the federal and regional levels, which forces researchers to turn to the analysis of the role of subnational actors in the Brazilian political system. The article identifies three main groups of approaches, each of which reveals the role of subnational actors in Brazil’s national policy. The first group includes studies examining the influence of subnational actors on the characteristics of the national party system. The second group includes works analyzing the influence of subnational actors on the choice of a certain policy course by executive authorities. The third one is devoted to the analysis of the role of the states in decision-making by legislative authorities. For the analysis, we selected studies published since the beginning of the 21st century, which focused on the relationship between the central authorities of Brazil and the political actors of the states. The choice is due to the current heterogeneity of approaches to conceptualizing and operationalizing the role of the states in shaping Brazil’s national policy.

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