According to several authors, electoral volatility is one indicator of the degree of institutionalization of the party system within a democratic regime. Low or moderate degrees of electoral preference oscillation indicate that the political parties which participate in electoral disputes have been successful in their task of effectively channeling electoral preferences within a country. High levels of electoral volatility are, on the other hand, seen as evidence of the precarious roots that parties have been able to sprout in society. The main goal of this article is to verify if the tendency toward declining electoral volatility in Brazil, observed at the national level in several studies a) is also repeated at the state level and b)in elections other than presidential races. This article covers the 1982 to 2006 period and examines the 5 types of races that occur within the Brazilian electoral system: presidential, state government, Senate, House of Representatives and Legislatures. Its major innovation consists in analysis of electoral volatility within the ambit of state districts, which allows us to begin to map out and understand the impact of the peculiarities of sub-national politics over electoral dynamics. Our main conclusion is that, albeit important exceptions, Brazil has been undergoing a general tendency toward declining volatility at both the national and state levels, which from perspective of the institutionalization of the party system means good news. We emphasize, however, that this declining tendency has not been accompanied by an increase in Brazilians' levels of satisfaction with political parties nor with greater degrees of identification with particular political parties; thus, Brazilian poliarchy may be suffering from serious problems of political representation.
electoral volatility; political party system; democracy; sub-national politics
