When a party leaves the scene:

the case of PSDB

Abstract

This paper aims to identify critical events of the rise and decline of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) since its creation in 1988. We argue that the party's inflection point began after the presidential election in 2014. In that election, the Worker’s Party (PT) candidate Dilma Rousseff defeated the PSDB’s candidate Aécio Neves, who questioned the result of the polls. Since then, PSDB’s leadership has undergone a succession of errors and mistaken strategies which weakened the party. To demonstrate this argument, we applied quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. We found that a lack of PSDB’s ability to satisfactorily respond to the impacts of critical events and unintended consequences provoked by its own elites’ actions led to the severe electoral deterioration of the party.