Brazilian Social Democracy Party - History

History

With the imminent collapse of the military dictatorship in the early 1980s, a group of left-wing intellectuals were mobilized to create a leftist party. Some of them attempted to work with the labour movement, led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the group split over ideological grounds. The democratic socialists joined the labour movement and founded the Worker's Party, while the social democrats remained in the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and would later create the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).

PSDB was founded on June 25, 1988 by members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party linked to the European social democratic movement as an attempt to clarify their ideals. Its manifesto preached "democracy as a fundamental value" and "social justice as an aim to be reached". In its foundation, the party attempted to unite political groups as diverse as social democrats, social liberals, Christian democrats and democratic socialists.

This period when PSDB was created was a very significant moment in the history of Brazilian politics. On April 21, 1985, the Brazilian people witnessed the death of Tancredo Neves, the last president not elected directly by the people since the beginning of the dictatorial government. With the formation of new parties, including PSDB, a National Constitutional Assembly was created which drafted the current, democratic constitution, in 1988.

A high proportion of the first members of PSDB came from the so-called "historic PMDB". This was and still is a very large party with many internal conflicts. The founders of PSDB were dissatisfied with the results of the Constitutional Assembly, and decided to create a party to reflect the need for a national political renewal. As their manifesto states, the new party was created "away from the official benefits, but close to the pulsing of the streets" (taken from a speech by party leader Franco Montoro). Some of the founding members were José Serra, Mário Covas, André Franco Montoro, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Aécio Neves, and Geraldo Alckmin.

In a country where two referenda, held in 1963 and in 1993, have shown a very strong preference for a presidential system of government, as in most countries of the Americas, PSDB stands almost alone in the preference given in its manifesto to a parliamentarian system of government. However, after the electors rejected "parlamentarismo" in 1993, and even though PSDB leader Cardoso was elected President the next year, the party did nothing in the last years to further the cause of a parliamentarian regime.

PSDB is one of the largest and most significant political parties in Brazil. Its official program states its policies as being social democratic and often associated with the Third Way movement, although the party is also regarded as being influenced by neoliberalism. The party's program states that it "reject populism and authoritarianism, as well as both fundamentalist neoliberalism and obsolete national-statism".

Despite its name, the PSDB is not a member of the Socialist International which draws together social democratic parties worldwide (the Brazilian member of the Socialist International is the Democratic Labour Party (PDT)). Also, the party has not, and has never had, the links to trade union movements that usually characterize social democratic parties; it used to sponsor a Central Union, SDS (Social-Democracia Sindical), which has now merged, together with Central Autônoma dos Trabalhadores (CAT), and the much more important Central Geral dos Trabalhadores (CGT), into the União Geral dos Trabalhadores (UGT), but its impact among the unions has always been quite unimpressive compared to even much smaller parties as the PDT or the PCdoB, or to the tucanos's own influence in society at large.