Political Regime and Parliamentary Recruitment in Brazil: A Collective Profile of Senators before and after the Dictatorship

The article rebuilds the collective profiles of the Brazilian Senate benches in three periods: the populist democracy (1945-1964) , the military dictatorship (1964-1979) and the regime of transition to liberal democracy (1979-1990). The time frame takes into account three party systems: multipartisan (1945-1965), bipartisan (1965-1979) and multiparty one more time (1979 ahead). The hypothesis we seek to test is the following: changes in the social profile and the profile of the political career of parliamentarians should be related to the type of political regime and, more specifically, with the then current party system. In the case analyzed here, is assumed the attributes of Brazilian Senate members elected under a system of several competing parties must be distinct from attributes of those elected under bipartisanship - even though the electoral rules were the same. In order to analyze the impact of the changes in conditions for access the upper chamber 351 senators were studied. The data shows these representatives had the profile of their careers severely affected by variations in the parameters of political competition imposed by the military dictatorship. The narrowing of opportunity structure, a straight effect of bipartisan system, was responsible for harming competitors without major political experience. With the reintroduction of multiparty politics in the 1982 elections, the characteristics of these parliamentary careers came back to the previous profile previous to 1964.