Funding parties and elections in Brazil

In the era of electronic mass media communication and highly specialized political marketing, election campaigns, in any part of the democratic world, have become very expensive enterprises. Brazil and its still young democracy are no exception. ¹ Large sums of money are needed for a candidate to be elected to one of the country’s 65,000 public offices. In spite of major differences between Brazil and the United States, it has been estimated that Fernando Collor de Mello’s campaign in 1989 (the first elected president since 1964) cost as much as President Bill Clinton’s for his first election in 1992: about $120 million. But, similarities between the two cases do not go beyond this point. Moreover, while President Clinton is in his second presidential term, Collor de Mello did not manage to complete his third year in office. Accused of corruption (related mainly to his campaign financing network), he was ousted from power, in 1992, by a constitutional impeachment.