THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDEOLOGICAL EXTREMISM AND ANTI-PARTYISM: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR THE BRAZILIAN CASE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56238/bocav25n76-002Keywords:
Anti-party Sentiment, Ideological Extremism, Polarization, Political Behavior, BrazilAbstract
In recent decades, anti-party sentiment and ideological extremism have become important phenomena in the debate on political behavior in contemporary democracies. However, although they often coexist in contexts of political crisis and polarization, their relationship remains underexplored in the literature. This article reviews the literature on these two phenomena with the aim of identifying theoretical mechanisms that connect them and situating this debate within the Brazilian context. We argue that ideological extremism can contribute to the production of anti-party attitudes through two mechanisms: a representative one, whereby extremist voters find little correspondence in mainstream parties; and a contextual-affective one, whereby, in scenarios of high polarization, the emotional hostility associated with radicalism extends to the party system as a whole. Brazil, with its trajectory of accumulating crises between 2013 and 2018 and with the simultaneous growth of right-wing extremism and widespread anti-party sentiment, constitutes a privileged laboratory for investigating this relationship. By mapping the existing debate and proposing an empirical agenda, this article seeks to contribute both to the Brazilian literature on political behavior and to the comparative debate on the conditions that weaken contemporary democracies.
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