The Transformation of the Workers' Party in Brazil, 1989-2009

Wendy Hunter is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. Her early work focused on Latin American militaries during the transition from authoritarian rule. A second phase of her research career was devoted to social policy decision making and human capital formation in Latin America. More recently, she has been engaged in understanding the growth and transformation of the Workers' Party in Brazil from 1989 until the present. She is the author of Eroding Military Influence in Brazil, and her articles have appeared in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Quarterly, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy and World Politics. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

“The transformation of the once-radical Brazilian Workers’ Party into a major electoral force and highly successful social democratic party of government is one of the great stories of contemporary Latin American politics. How and why the PT made this impressive change over the course of two eventful decades and, in the process, changed Brazil is a story that has been waiting to be told and one that Wendy Hunter tells beautifully in this definitive account.” —Frances Hagopian, Harvard University

• 1. Introduction: understanding the normalization of the Workers' Party; 2. Strategic change or institutional persistence?: Evolution of the Workers' Party; 3. Opposition politics: the PT in the Chamber of Deputies; 4. The PT in municipal government: the pragmatic face of the party; 5. Striving for the presidency: from opposition to government; 6. New challenges and opportunities: the PT in government, 2003–9; 7. Final reflections: analytical implications and comparative perspectives.