Parameters for an empirical analysis of the relationship between ideas, elites and institutions

Abstract

This article proposes a set of parameters for understanding political behavior in Brazil during the first part of the twentieth century. Starting from a precisely-defined political problem – the São Paulo state political elite’s adhesion to and ideological support for the Estado Novo regime – we will engage in more general reflections on the relationship between ideas, elites and political institutions. For these purposes, we give salience to two types of variables which enable us to locate political agents within social space, understand their mental dispositions, how they are formed, and what inspires and how they explain their actions. We refer here to structural variables, related to the general functioning of the political world, and historical variables, related to this specific political context. Keywords: ideology, political elite, Estado Novo.