The big center as a challenge to democracy in Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to present my work plan for an internship at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) of the l'Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), as well as justifying the relevance of this internship for my postdoctoral research in progress. In my current research, I seek to characterize the Brazilian "Centrão" ("Big Center"), a supra-partisan group of parliamentarians that in my argument has been central to explaining the movements of the Brazilian political system and their implications for democracy. The predominant explanations in Political Science for the political crisis faced by Brazil in the 2010s did not address the centrality of the "Centrão" ("Big Center"). This research project abroad aims to characterize this group and relate its existence and actions to the recent crisis of democracy. This will be done based on the use of existing international literature on centrist parties and conservative parties, through comparative methods, which will be deepened during the internship at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI).