ABSTRACT
Brazil had taken halt a decade to slide into a fully authoritarian regime under armed forces inclined to the role of long-term rulers, then spent almost an equal period under a repressive government determined to institutionalize this into a permanent system. By 1974 the midnight of military rule had passed, and the next five years would be a reversal of the late 1960s as champions of the military as arbiter outwitted and outfought the entrenched hard-line advocates of indefinite military rule. As the Figueiredo government limped into its sixth year, transition to civilian, fully competitive politics was far from assured. By November a foundation was laid for a two-party system composed of the government-sponsored National Renovating Alliance and opposition elements banded together in the Brazilian Democratic Movement. Permanent harmony between the disparate elements of the Democratic Alliance likely was not possible due to incompatible concepts of what the socioeconomic content of the Nova Republica should be.
