XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Race and Substantive Representation in Brazil’s Congress

• In Event: Electoral Politics and Struggles for Representation in Contemporary Brazil

Abstract

Brazil is a racially diverse and unequal democracy. Afro-Brazilians, who comprise a majority of the country’s population, are rarely elected to public office. While substantial research explores why Afro-Brazilians are not elected in proportion to their population size, the implications of their underrepresentation have received limited scholarly attention. Do Afro-Brazilian legislators advocate for the interests of their nonwhite constituents? In this paper, I analyze the relationship between legislator race and bill introduction using data on all the bills submitted to the Brazilian Congress between 1995 and 2022. My analysis shows that Afro-Brazilian legislators are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to introduce legislation that improves the status of Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian population. Nevertheless, their ability to transform the race-conscious legislation they propose into law is hindered by their limited numbers. In this way, the descriptive underrepresentation of Afro-Brazilians perpetuates racial inequality in Brazilian society.

Author

• Andrew Janusz, University of Florida