“FIFTY shades of pink” is how Luiz Felipe d’Avila of the Centre for Public Leadership, a think-tank, describes Brazil’s political spectrum. In fact, the country has just 32 registered parties. But Mr d’Avila is correct when it comes to tinge: 26 have names that are Pythonesque combinations of words like “social”, “democrat” and “workers”. “Even those who are not on the left do not call themselves the right,” says Jairo Nicolau, a psephologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The aversion to anything that is labelled “right-wing” is a legacy of the country’s military dictatorship, which took power in a coup 50 years ago this week and only gave it up again in 1985. That is understandable, if not entirely fair. The military regime followed a set of policies—support for national champions, tolerance of cartels, trade protection, redistributive cash-transfer programmes and just a dash of macroeconomic orthodoxy to keep the markets sweet—that would not be out of place in left-leaning France.
For all their “progressive sugar-coating”, says Roberto Unger of Harvard University, parties in Brazil today more or less hew to this model. In that respect, he remarks, you could call them “conservative”.
Brazilians themselves are not a particularly leftie bunch. In November a poll by Datafolha, a research firm, found that nearly half hold right-wing views on social issues such as gun control or the death penalty, and just over a quarter have left-wing views. On economics the proportions are reversed. But that still leaves more than one Brazilian in four sceptical of state intervention, tax-and-spend policies and so on.
“Voters recoil at the term ‘conservative’ while embracing many of the ideas,” says Ronaldo Caiado, a member of the Democrats, one of two right-wing parties in Congress (the other disguises itself under the name the Progressive Party). Mr Caiado bashes government bloat, talks tough on crime and preaches traditional morals. His is a lonely lot in Brazil’s legislature.
Reinforcements may be on the way. João Amoêdo is founder and chairman of a freshly minted political outfit called Novo (“New”). Its platform of free markets, a minimal state, low taxes and individual liberties (including the right to bear arms) looks outlandish in comparison with the Brazilian political ideal of “tropical Sweden”, to use Mr Unger’s phrase. Mr Amoêdo, a financier in his day job, even dares utter the word “privatisation” in the context of national champions such of Petrobras, the state-controlled oil giant. Novo is just 20,000 notarised signatures shy of the 492,000 needed to register a party. They should be in by May, too late to field candidates in elections this October but, Mr Amoêdo hopes, not too late to put the size of the state on the agenda.
As Brazilians grow richer, more may feel they would rather conserve their gains than share them. Adriano Codato, a political scientist at the Federal University of Paraná, notes the emergence of a new self-styled ideological right, especially among bloggers and columnists. They have been electorally irrelevant until now, Mr Codato says, but this could change.