This article analyzes the electoral coalitions established to the Presidency of the Republic, Federal Senate, Chamber of Deputies and governatorates in the period of 1990 to 2010. The objective is to evaluate the presence of trends and rationalities in the coalitionist behavior of the parties in these elections. The hypothesis that guides such analyzis is that the emergence of institutional and political incentives, replicate, in the coalitions established in the in the last, the preferences and oppositions exercised on the first. In the data analysis, are taken as units of analysis the coalitions and alliances, and the parties are classified as relevants or micros, according to Giovanni Sartori’s terms. The study has allowed to verify consistant trends in the electoral participation of both types of party and, in respect to the rationality of the coalitionist strategies, patterns of different behaviour among the parties, and the main contenders for the presidencial post and their most loyal allies replicate, in the coalitions established to the other posts, the same racionality imposed in the coalitions of the presidential dispute. In general terms, this study proves and qualifies thesis already existant in the literature and elaborate new ones, in particular, concerning the rationality that guides the main federal coalitions is replicated, by a significant number of the parties that compose the system, in the federal legislative and majoritary state elections, also that the traditional ideological resistance among the brasilian parties, in the formation of electoral coalitions, has been subsomed in a political resistance.
electoral coalitions; brazilian party system; elections; electoral alliances; electoral behavior
