Zach Beecham

It is a super fragmented multi-party system, one of the most fragmented in the world, by which I mean it has one of the greatest numbers of parties represented in the National Congress of any country in the world.

How many?

Around 20.

It changes a lot, right?

Between elections, legislators will jump between different ones, but I believe the current count's around 20.

And this is a real difference between the United States, right?

Because when you've got 20 parties, that means that no president can ever, ever have an outright majority in Congress.

It's just basically mathematically impossible, given the number of parties and the president only represents one party.

So what do they do?

Well, they end up making laws and passing laws in a very different way than in the U.S.

system where basically what you get right now is your party needs a congressional majority and then you pass bills on party-line votes.

No, no.

In Brazil, you have to wheel and deal.

You have to give cabinet spots to other parties in order to get them into a legislative coalition with you.

And even that's often not enough.

You've got parties out of your coalition who you need votes from.

And you kind of buy them off basically by promising legislators from specific states money for projects in their states.

And then they go and they vote for you.

And in exchange, they get deliverables for their constituents that ensure they can keep getting reelected over and over and over again.

I was talking to a Brazilian journalist, another one, his name is Pedro Doria.