Brazil has a multi-party system with numerous political parties sharing the vote, in which no single party has a chance of gaining power alone, so that they must work with each other to form coalition governments.

The ideologies of the different parties should be taken with a grain of salt, as many of them are in fact loose coalitions of local and individual leaderships.

Above the broad range of political parties in Brazilian Parliament since there is no election threshold, the Workers’ Party (PT), the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and the Democrats (DEM) together control the absolute majority of seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and effectively have dominated Brazilian political landscape since the returning of democracy in 1985. Smaller parties often make alliances with at least one of these four major parties.

According to sociologist Marcelo Ridenti, Brazilian politics is divided between internationalistic liberals and statist nationalistics.

The first group consists of politicians which argue that the internationalization of the economy is essential for the development of the country, while the other group rely on interventionism, and protection of state enterprises.

According to Ridenti, which cites the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration as an example of the first group and the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration as an example of the second, “we have it cyclically”.

Lula’s Workers’ Party tends to the statist nationalism side, although there are privatizing forces within his party and government, while Cardoso’s Social Democratic Party tends to favor the international private market side by taking neoliberal policies. That is especially truth when considering that Lula compares himself with Getúlio Vargas, Juscelino Kubitscheck and João Goulart, presidents seen as statist nationalistics.

As of November 2010, 13.8 million Brazilians were affiliated to a political party. That accounts for 7.3% of the country’s population and 10.2% of voters. The preferred parties are PMDB (which accounts for 16.6% of affiliated voters), the Workers’ Party (10.0% of affiliated voters), and PP (9.8% of affiliated voters).

The left wing of the Catholic Church, the Landless Workers’ Movement, and labor unions pressure the government for more intense reforms on taxation and landed property, while the rightist DEM party is critical of the government’s social and economic policies.