Between Renewal and Stability: Party System Change from a Multi-Level Perspective in Brazil (1998–2018)

The growth of the far right and election results in Brazil are often associated with national or large-scale events. The multi-level features of these developments, namely party competition at the sub-national level, are overlooked in the literature. This article argues that changes in the Brazilian national party system – those observed from Bolsonaro's election, mainly – are rooted in sub-national political dynamics. Through a comparative and longitudinal analysis of multi-level executive and legislative elections, we find that, although there are distinct patterns of competition between the national-sub-national and within-country levels, this difference is not evident in volatility.     

The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case

Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial instability is relevant for explaining a government's broken promises, and that its importance increases at the junior minister level and among the most salient ministries. Relying on data on the fulfilment of electoral promises and ministerial instability in Portugal between 1995 and 2019, backed by interviews with former ministers and junior ministers, we provide evidence that the fulfilment of electoral promises is significantly influenced by portfolio volatility, particularly at the junior ministerial level and in the most important ministries.