The aim of the article is to measure the expression of loyalty in the political career of Brazilian deputies. In order to do that, party membership of each deputy throughout his/her political life was tracked. This enabled the author to reconstitute the composition of different party groups in every term, identifying their homogeneity relative to previous party membership of representatives in each term. The goal was to compare both multiparty periods stressing the patterns found in each situation. In a second step, the author tried to capture a trend to crystallization of organizational loyalties, stressing hard cores within each party group.
Parties; Parliamentary recruiting; Party loyalty; Representatives; Legislative
