The 2002 elections were good to the left-wing Worker’s Party (PT) in Brazil. The 57-year-old former metal worker, Luis Inacio da Silva, or Lula as he is more commonly called, was swept into office after almost a decade of unsuccessful attempts to rise to the country’s highest public office. As The Economist correctly synthesized in a March 2003 article, “Idealism and impatience with government-as-usual are much on display in Brasilia two months into the government of Luis Inacio da Silva.”

However, the great success of a party that has been slowly growing into prominence since the late 1970s veils a deep tension that threatens to undermine the effectiveness of Lula’s administration. It is a tension that arises from the conflicting idealism that is palpable in the political atmosphere and the pragmatism and compromise that have been required for that idealism to reach the higher echelons of Brazilian power politics. In order to have a chance at winning the 2002 elections, Lula and the PT leadership had to become “electable.” The party had to compromise on key issues in its platform that were too left wing to engender broad support among Brazilians. Once in the presidential palace, this pragmatic trend has only been reinforced by the relative inexperience of the PT machinery in national politics. The Lula administration has been forced to submit to the financial orthodoxy of the Cardoso years. The top priorities for reform have also been adopted from the previous government. The Worker’s Party, in the name of a broader “social pact,” has even had to agree to political arrangements with previously hated “oligarchs.” This all means that the only way in which Lula and the party leaders can keep the PT strong and in power is to convince the rank-and-file to support policies that they have rejected vehemently in the past. This is no easy task, and it will take most of Lula and the PT leadership’s political energies to successfully overcome this rising tension.

The persuasion of the rank-and-file of the PT toward compromise is particularly difficult because of the very nature of party politics in Brazil, and especially PT politics. Given the vast area of the country, its perennial communications and transportation troubles, and its social heterogeneity, party politics have always been markedly local in nature. The Worker’s Party itself was born out of trade unionism in São Paulo in 1979 and did not incorporate significant numbers of professional politicians or students in its ranks until the late 1980s. It is a truly local, mass movement, grassroots party that is divided into no less that six factions along the political spectrum—Lula’s Articulation is only one of these factions. In other words, the PT is an excellent specimen of the local party politics at work. However, because of the demographic and geographic conditions of Brazil, presidential politics have tended to be particularly broad in scope. Only by compromising on key issues did Lula and the PT achieve sufficient electability to become the driving force of the 2002 elections.

The result of this combination of entrenched local machinery and broad national appeal has been a progressive disconnect between the leadership and rank-and-file of the PT. This alienation was powerfully demonstrated in the assassination of Celso Daniel, mayor of Santo Andre and a main PT leader, by radical elements of the Brazilian left wing, the Brazilian Revolutionary Action Front. It is alienation that has made persuasion of the rank-and-file more and more difficult.

Given this major hurdle, there are two possibilities on the horizon: one is that Lula will manage to effect an assimilation of the rank-and-file into the new pragmatism of the PT, and that the Worker’s Party will move definitively to the political center, much as the Labor Party did in the United Kingdom; the other is that the Party’s efficiency will be undermined by Lula and the leadership’s pragmatism, as the rank-and-file become progressively more alienated, and the PT’s grip on power slowly weakens.

The first scenario would require that the government policies born out of compromise succeed, at least nominally. This success would help to silence the opposition to Lula’s pragmatism and begin to gain the confidence of the PT rank-and-file. There are certain positive signs: Cardoso’s economic policies did, and continue to, bear some fruit, and Lula has done much to quell investors’ fears over his leftist background. Yet, there are many issues that still can prove decisive and, if improperly handled, detrimental to Lula’s government: crime and corruption in Brazil’s major cities, and pension reform plans, are two prime examples.

The second scenario is the most likely if only because it requires inaction, which in critical times and complex political systems like Brazil’s is not uncommon. In this scenario, Lula manages to succeed in international affairs, which require executive action almost exclusively, but gets bogged down in national issues as his already tenuous base in the legislature collapses under the tensions created by his new pragmatism.

Will Lula truly live up to his reputation as an incomparable leader of the masses and persuade his party’s rank-and-file to follow him into uncharted territory, or will he be unable to resolve the paradox inherent in his political strategy? It is only a question of time before one or the other scenario becomes evident.