The number of collective candidacies contesting elections rose from 98 between 2016 and 2018 to 542 between 2020 and 2022
Valentina Fraiz
Collective candidacies — where a group of people run for a single seat in city councils, legislative assemblies, or the National Congress — have become a growing trend in Brazil as a strategy to increase the political participation of underrepresented groups, such as women and Black candidates. Research by Debora Rezende de Almeida, a professor of political science at the University of Brasília (UnB), shows that collective and shared candidacies have expanded from just 2 in the elections held between 1994 and 1998 to 542 in the elections from 2020 to 2022. Despite their potential to create more diverse political platforms, group candidacies still face barriers to mainstream implementation due to the lack of regulation by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).
Almeida has been researching this election format for the last three years, with funding from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). As group candidacies are a relatively new development in Brazilian politics, available data is limited. To date, Almeida has compiled a database with information on 319 candidacies from the 2020 municipal elections and 218 candidacies from the 2022 state and federal elections. She has also interviewed the members of 35 collectively held legislative seats at various levels. Her data indicates that in the 2020 and 2022 elections, white women were the majority of candidates for city council among collective candidacies, outnumbering white men. Similarly, the number of Black women running for state and federal deputy and city-council positions exceeded that of Black men (see chart).
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Almeida notes that countries like Spain, Colombia, and Argentina have introduced a similar participatory format known as “shared candidacies,” which have also been experimented with in Brazil since 1994. In this model, individually elected candidates create spaces and mechanisms for public consultation when drafting and voting on bills. They might open online channels or organize discussion groups to elicit public opinions on specific policy issues. “This model differs from collective candidacies, which are groups of people running to collectively hold the same seat as co-councilors or co-deputies,” Almeida explains.
To distinguish between collective and shared candidacies, Almeida analyzed the TSE database and intersected it with online information about politicians’ and collectives’ platforms. Some candidates and groups do not specify whether their candidacy is collective or shared, meaning the actual number of such candidacies might be higher than documented in Almeida’s research.
Luciana Lindenmeyer, who has studied collective candidacies as part of her doctoral research at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), explains that Brazilian law does not currently allow collective candidacies to be formally registered. Typically, one member of the group is registered as an individual candidate. Lindenmeyer, who is a member of the National Front for Collective Candidacies, notes that until recently the TSE prohibited candidates from describing their candidacy as collective. “In 2020, the Court suspended some candidacies that included the word ‘collective’ in their descriptions, arguing that it confused voters,” Lindenmeyer says. This rule changed in 2021, allowing candidates to include “collective” in their official names. Despite the lack of formal recognition by the TSE, collective office-holders often draft a commitment letter outlining the relationship between the officially elected congressperson and their co-representatives.
“Before 2021, it was impossible to identify collective candidacies just by looking at TSE records,” Almeida adds. Her research shows that until 2018, shared candidacies, totaling 28 that year, outnumbered collective ones, of which there were just 4. “This trend reversed in the 2020 municipal elections, where collective candidacies increased significantly, resulting in 29 collectively held seats versus only 5 shared ones,” says Almeida.
Between 2016 and 2018, there were 98 collective candidacies, a figure which surged to 542 between 2020 and 2022. Among these, 218 were for state and federal deputy positions, and 5 for Senate positions. “This was the first time we recorded so many group candidacies for these positions,” she notes. She attributes these advances to the efforts of groups who feel underrepresented in Brazilian politics. “Since they can’t find space within traditional party mechanisms to run for elections, they choose to form collective candidacies and pool their political capital,” explains Almeida. Brazil’s fairly recent democratization, she notes, has led to increased interaction between grassroots movements and the political system, with social actors forming part of government administrations, holding office, and participating in policymaking. “The growth of collective candidacies has been a part of this trend,” she says.
Valentina Fraiz
In the 2020 elections, Almeida’s research found that collective candidacies were concentrated in the Southeast (52.4%). Another key finding is the high educational level of members of collective candidacies. That year, 28.7% of the total number of municipal election candidates had some level of higher education, while 61% of the official candidates in collective candidacies had completed higher education. “The higher education levels among collective city-council candidates shows that academic qualifications alone are not enough to guarantee electoral success through traditional political pathways,” Almeida observes. The two main agendas for these slates were the rights of underrepresented groups and social policies.
Among the 34 group candidacies elected to seats in city councils in 2020, 23 had women as official candidates. Among the official candidates, 19 identified as white, 10 as Black, 4 as brown, and 1 as Asian. Almeida also profiled the 106 members of collective candidacies elected that year. She found that 67 were women and 39 were men, with 2 identifying as transgender women and 1 as a transgender man. Within this group, 39 identified as Black and 16 as brown, while 48 were white. Two identified as Indigenous, and one as Asian.
During his doctorate at the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo (IP-USP), completed in 2022, José Fernando Andrade Costa, a psychologist at the State University of Feira de Santana (UEFS), in Bahia, researched the experiences of several collective candidacies in Brazil. One example is a group of five people elected in 2016 to serve in the City Council of Alto Paraíso (GO), with only one member officially holding the position and the others serving as co-councilors. Costa also analyzed successful collective candidacies for the state legislatures of São Paulo and Pernambuco in 2018. In terms of legislative activity, the São Paulo group was notably productive. “This group ranked 8th out of 94 deputies by number of bills introduced.”
However, Costa also identified significant challenges in aligning the agendas of each member. “We observed disputes over which issues should take priority. Even within parties, individuals with differing ideological positions can disagree when voting on bills,” Costa explains.
Another notable aspect of collective candidacies, according to Ricardo Alves Cavalheiro, a legal scholar at Santa Catarina State University (UDESC), is their adoption by a diverse range of political ideologies. Cavalheiro coauthored a 2019 study led by the São Paulo-based NGO Rede de Ação Política pela Sustentabilidade, which found that, up to that year, 1% of collective and shared candidacies had a right-wing ideology, 14% were center-right, 38% were centrist, 33% were center-left, and 14% were left-wing. Cavalheiro views collective candidacies as a new tool for democratic innovation, similar to participatory budgeting. They enable policymakers to give citizens a voice on which areas should be prioritized in the public budget.
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In her master’s research, completed in 2021 at the Federal University of Lavras (UFLA) in Minas Gerais, journalist Samara Aparecida Resende Avelar also explored the effectiveness of collectively held council seats. Her study focused on the city councils of Belo Horizonte (MG) and Alto Paraíso (GO). According to Avelar’s research, one positive aspect of these collectives was their development of methods to engage with communities during voting and in drafting legislation. They established political councils, held public meetings, and organized touring offices and meetings across different communities, all of which were open to the general public. Avelar sees a connection between these collectives and the deliberative model of democracy proposed by German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas. “For Habermas, a democracy should include society in decisions about the regulation of collective life through deliberative processes. He argues that the more space people have to discuss demands and express views, the more legitimate the resulting laws, and the more likely they are to be followed,” she explains.
However, Avelar also found that, despite the significant number of bills created through community dialog, few were ultimately passed. The Belo Horizonte group, for instance, introduced 25 bills, but only one had been enacted by the end of her study, creating a municipal social housing program for women who have experienced domestic violence. The Alto Paraíso group’s only successful bill required the local water utility to purchase equipment to remove air bubbles from household pipes, lowering water bills for city residents. “Although the members of collectively held legislative seats often advocate for the rights of minority groups, they have only managed to pass laws where they benefit the entire city,” she observes.
Almeida from UnB recommends caution regarding the democratizing potential of this candidacy format. “There are still many barriers in the political and party system to the effective inclusion of underrepresented groups,” she notes. The lack of regulation means that the political success of collectively held seats varies significantly depending on the municipality. Because not all co-councilors can officially hold the seat, some groups in larger cities like São Paulo have hired co-councilors as staff, enabling them to share duties and responsibilities with the officially elected councilor. “This arrangement allows co-councilors to actively participate in plenaries, committee meetings, and caucuses. They receive salaries and can devote themselves exclusively to legislative activities,” Almeida explains. However, councilors in small towns are not always able to hire staff, preventing their co-councilors from having similar access to city councils or institutional processes. “Internal conflicts can arise as a result,” she notes.
In her analysis, Almeida found that collective candidacies involving people from different parties were unsuccessful, with many dissolving post-election when members had only met during the formation of the collective candidacy. “For collective candidacies to work, members need to be ideologically, personally, and politically aligned. In general, the most successful groups were those whose members knew each other before the elections,” she argues, noting that in the 2020 elections, 25 collective candidacies were successful, and 7 of them dissolved within the first year. In these cases, the elected official remained in office, as other slate members are not recognized by the TSE. Besides the lack of legal and institutional support, Almeida says many parties oppose collective candidacies, believing the format to be unfair. “Combining the political capital of different members gives collective candidacies an edge over individual candidates,” she comments.
Despite existing barriers, researchers agree that the emergence of collective candidacies has been beneficial in shedding light on the issue of political inclusion for certain societal groups. These initiatives carry a symbolism that can help to amplify diversity by “encouraging people to think of politics as a collective effort and one that should ensure political alternation,” says anthropologist Carmela Zigoni, a political advisor at the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (INESC) in Brasília. According to Lindenmeyer, regulating collective candidacies is a first step to addressing existing barriers. This could soon be achieved with the approval of Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 379/2017 and bills 4,475/2020 and 4,724/2020, all currently pending in Congress.
The constitutional amendment, explain the researchers consulted for this article, will add a paragraph to Article 14 of the Federal Constitution to allow for collective candidacies in the Legislative Branch. The two other bills elaborate on how legislative seats would be held collectively in practice, such as requiring that these groups develop a charter to regulate their activities. The charter must include criteria for joining the slate, rules for replacing co-representatives in case of resignation, and the distribution of duties and salaries.
Gender disparity in elections In Brazil’s 2022 elections, out of the 9,200 women who ran for various positions, only 308 were elected
With 105 million women, representing 51.5% of the population, according to the 2022 Demographic Census by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Brazil is one of the countries with the greatest gender disparity in politics in Latin America. This is highlighted by a 2020 study by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and UN Women. The report analyzed 11 nations and found that Brazil is among the three countries on the continent with the lowest representation of women in various spheres of government.
In Brazil, women held 17% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 12% in the Senate in 2023. In addition, only Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte elected female governors in the last elections. According to the Census of Brazilian Mayors (2021–2024) conducted by the NGO Instituto Alziras in Rio de Janeiro, 12% of Brazilian mayors are women, a figure that drops to 4% for Black women. Female mayors are concentrated in smaller cities and govern just 9% of Brazil’s population. Data from the TSE show that in the 2022 general elections there were only 9,800 female candidates compared to 19,400 male candidates, out of a total of 29,200 candidates. Among the female candidates, 308 were elected, compared to 1,375 men.
Since 1997, Law no. 9,504 has required parties and coalitions to fill at least 30% of their candidacies with female candidates in elections for the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, the Legislative Chamber of the Federal District, legislative assemblies, and city councils. In 2018, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) ruled that the Party Fund must be distributed for election campaigns in proportion to the number of women running. “Despite legal mandates, most parties fail to comply with the gender quota and funding levels. Instead, they allocate more funding to candidates with higher chances of winning,” says anthropologist Carmela Zigoni, a political advisor at the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (INESC) in Brasília. According to Zigoni, the underrepresentation of women is not being adequately addressed through quotas and funding guidelines, leading women to form collective candidacies as a strategy to increase their political participation.
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