ABSTRACT
Before setting out to explore how the PT confronted the challenge of governability it is necessary to understand how the party and its socio-political field changed in the years of the postdemocratic transition and throughout the 1990s. During those years, the PT field experienced a reconfiguration in its goals and strategies, which affected the way in which its different components—the party on the one hand and its social allies on the other—related to each other and approached the state. The literature on the transformation of the PT has mainly analysed the changes in the party as a result of the electoral competition 1 and, to a lesser extent, due to its increasing control of public office, 2 particularly the executive office at the sub-national level. In this chapter I show how these changes not only affected the party but also the dynamics of its socio-political field.
