How Many Political Parties Should Brazil Have? A Data-driven Method to Assess and Reduce Fragmentation in Multi-Party Political Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces ARRANGE, a data-driven method that analyzes congressional voting data to determine the optimal number of political parties, aiming to reduce fragmentation and improve party discipline in Brazil.

Contribution

ARRANGE is a novel, efficient method that assesses and reduces party fragmentation using roll call data, providing a data-backed approach to optimize party systems.

Findings

ARRANGE identified 23 configurations with fewer parties.

Configurations showed increased party discipline.

More balanced distribution of members across parties.

Abstract

In June 2013, Brazil faced the largest and most significant mass protests in a generation. These were exacerbated by the population's disenchantment towards its highly fragmented party system, which is composed by a very large number of political parties. Under these circumstances, presidents are constrained by informal coalition governments, bringing very harmful consequences to the country. In this work I propose ARRANGE, a dAta dRiven method foR Assessing and reduciNG party fragmEntation in a country. ARRANGE uses as input the roll call data for congress votes on bills and amendments as a proxy for political preferences and ideology. With that, ARRANGE finds the minimum number of parties required to house all congressmen without decreasing party discipline. When applied to Brazil's historical roll call data, ARRANGE was able to generate 23 distinct configurations that, compared with the status quo, have (i) a significant smaller number of parties, (ii) a higher discipline of partisans towards their parties and (iii) a more even distribution of partisans into parties. ARRANGE is fast and parsimonious, relying on a single, intuitive parameter.