Opinion – Michael França: Minorities want power, but they can’t

Socioeconomic inequality is reflected in political inequality. The inverse relationship also tends to be valid. This has the potential to create a vicious circle, in which the maintenance and accumulation of power in certain groups feeds back over time and generates considerable challenges for the development of unequal countries.

This is a portrait of Brazil. Although part of the political system has been captured to serve the interests of a small portion of society and there is an overrepresentation of high-income white men, the percentage of candidates from women, blacks and individuals with disadvantaged backgrounds has increased in recent decades.

However, wanting is not power. The political pretension of minorities has not been reflected, in the same magnitude, in a reality. Despite the significant advance of their candidacies, a small portion has managed to get elected.

In the 2020 legislative elections, there has been timid progress in representativeness. According to a study carried out by Luiz Augusto Campos, a professor at Uerj, the total number of elected councilors made up of black men and white and black women has increased. However, the same cannot be said about the elections for the Executive: the dominance of white men in city halls has advanced.

The electoral success of each population group depends on a number of factors. Voters’ biases towards minorities represent a possibility that has been verified by scholars in the field. The reduced availability of political connections and time to dedicate to campaigns represent other factors that decrease the chances of minorities being elected.

However, studies show that access to campaign resources and personal assets are often decisive in the results of an election. Groups with more resources systematically gain advantages in the race for power.

Thus, representative institutions are not being enough to mitigate political inequality. In other words, equality in political rights is not guaranteeing equity in the influence of government actions among different population groups.

This fact creates a curious pattern: minorities tend to be the focus of a wide range of public policies, but they are very far from the decision-making spaces of the State. This can not only affect the effectiveness of these policies but also help certain groups to perpetuate themselves in power.

In this context, it is known that individual interests tend to take precedence over the collective. Thus, it is difficult to imagine substantive social advances in a country in which the state was divided by a portion of the elite that tends to have little appreciation for the underprivileged strata.

Without a political reform that seeks to include minorities in decision-making spaces, it seems unlikely that any government, however well-intentioned, will be able to structurally reduce inequalities.

The text is a tribute to the song “When the People Enter the Dance”, by Laudeni Beto Sem Braço and Carlito Cavalcante, performed by Beth Carvalho.