Suchergebnisse

AbstractWhat are the characteristics of pre-democratic elections? This article seeks to answer this question by analysing the Brazilian First Republic. Through an original assessment of formal complaints filed by defeated candidates in federal elections, we show that (1) political conflicts were intense and electoral fraud was a consequence of parties' inability to monopolise the administrative machine in charge of conducting elections; (2) elections were organised by state-level parties, but voting practices were confined to local environments; and (3) voters were mobilised collectively, not individually. These three factors should be taken into account in future research on elections before democracy.

AbstractStudies of electoral fraud tend to focus their analyses only on the pre-electoral or electoral phases. By examining the Brazilian First Republic (1889–1930), this article shifts the focus to a later phase, discussing a particular type of electoral fraud that has been little explored by the literature, namely, that perpetrated by the legislatures themselves during the process of giving final approval to election results. The Brazilian case is interesting because of a practice known asdegola('beheading') whereby electoral results were altered when Congress decided on which deputies to certify as duly elected. This has come to be seen as a widespread and standard practice in this period. However, this article shows that this final phase of rubber-stamping or overturning election results was important not because of the number of degolas, which was actually much lower than the literature would have us believe, but chiefly because of their strategic use during moments of political uncertainty. It argues that the congressional certification of electoral results was deployed as a key tool in ensuring the political stability of the Republican regime in the absence of an electoral court.