ABSTRACT
Recent transitions from authoritarianism to democracy in several of the most advanced countries of Latin America have generated renewed interest in central questions about public opinion, voter alignment, and democratic theory. Can the expansion of suffrage and participation occur without generating instability and ungovernability? Are mass publics sufficiently wise to avoid the demagogue and sufficiently informed to vote on the complex policy alternatives of the modem state? This article argues that contested elections during the Brazilian transition caused a rapid alignment from the weak and unstructured voting patterns reported by scholars in authoritarian Brazil to patterns of public opinion and voter alignment typical of the advanced democracies. This argument counters several core assumptions of empirical democratic theory and differs significantly from recent expectations of democratic transitions.
