LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS IN THE 1989 BRA ZILIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

In industrial societies, class, ethnicity, and religion are determinin g factors in election results. It is believed and local party organiza tions have been playing ever more marginal roles in national elections . Has the mass media ended up reducing local parties to mere spectator s? Are local party machines too weak to lend their support to presiden tial candidates? This article analyzes the effects that local organiza tions had on Brazil's 1989 presidential races. Brazil is a kind of cas e study in the collapse of local party organizations given its interru ption in political competition, the absence of parties boasting partic ipation in the country's earlier democratic experience, and the fragil ity of citizen-party identification. Most observers of the 1989 presid ential contest effectively affirm that television ''made'' the winning candidate and that political parties had little or no importance in t he final results. Nevertheless, the candidates themselves acted as if party support were relevant and, within the context of Brazilian polit ics, it was rational for mayors to barter votes in exchange for future advantages for their municipalities. Throughout the article, the auth or made use of models of growing complexity in analyzing the voting da ta on major candidates. These models, which include both measurements of party inclination as well as socioeconomic and demographic factors, reveal that candidates attained better results in municipalities wher e the mayor represented their supporting party. The models underscore the effects that spatial factors such as ''friends and neighbors'' hav e on the tactics of local politicians, and also make it possible to di stinguish between popular and charismatic components and purely organi zational factors of political support.