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The Colour of the Elected: Determinants of the Political Under-Representation of Blacks and Browns in Brazil

  • Luiz Augusto Campos EMAIL logo and Carlos Machado
From the journal World Political Science

Abstract

It appears to be beyond dispute that Brazilian politics is overwhelmingly White. Recent surveys indicate that the proportion of people of colour in the federal parliament is around 20%. But despite such obvious marginalisation, little is known about the causes of this political under-representation. This paper attempts to shed light on the main filters driving out non-Whites, i.e. Blacks and Browns, from Brazilian politics. To this end, we have carried out a survey of the skin colour of candidates to a seat in the City Council of Brazil’s two largest cities: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in the 2012 elections. Given the lack of official records on the race or skin colour of these candidates, we chose to submit their photos, made publicly available by the Supreme Electoral Court, to classification by a team of researchers. The results have allowed us to gauge the extent to which the political alienation of non-White Brazilians is due to: (a) bias in party recruitment; (b) differences in educational capital and personal wealth between White and non-White candidates; (c) inequalities in the distribution of party and electoral resources; or (d) the electoral preferences of voters themselves. Apparently, the electoral opportunities of Blacks and Browns reflect the difficulties that these groups face when trying to ascend to the small elite of candidates that have the biggest funding and the most votes.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Thyago Simas de Oliveira for his support in building the system of indexation and classification for the candidates’ photos; also Isadora Harvey, Bruno Viggiano, Victor Ramos and Leandro Guedes for their help in classifying the photos; and the RBCP’s anonymous reviewers.

Annex

Occupation Classification According to the EGP Model

To establish to what extent inequality between Whites and non-Whites can be attributed to class inequalities, we chose to classify candidates according to the EGP social class scheme, developed by Erikson et al. (1979). In this neo-Weberian model, classes are defined basically by the employment relations that their members establish within the labour market (employers, self-employed, and employees), their situation in the market (income levels, degrees of economic security etc.) and their work situation (authority over other employees, autonomy over their own activities etc.). Based on this, the authors suggest an analytical division into seven classes (see Table 7). One of this model’s advantages is its versatility, since it allows different redefinitions of classes stemming from their merger into larger groups. Table 7 shows not only this typology, but our suggestion for a merger into three major groups. We have decided to limit the extension of the “upper class” category to the EGP’s first class scheme because most of the candidates come from these higher occupations.

Table 7:

EGP Class Model.

ClassificationNumberOccupation and/or work situation
Upper classIHigher-grade professionals, administrators, and officials; managers in large industrial establishments; large proprietors
Middle classIILower-grade professionals, administrators, and officials; higher grade technicians; managers in small industrial establishments; supervisors of non-manual employees
IIIRoutine non-manual employees
IVSmall proprietors, self-employed artisans, and other self-employed workers
Working classVLower-grade technicians; supervisors of manual workers
VISkilled workers in industrial establishments
VIISemi-skilled or unskilled manual workers and workers in agriculture

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Published Online: 2018-4-11
Published in Print: 2018-4-25

©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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