Politics as a family business: family arrangements and nepotism in the history of the Magalhães and Richa families

Abstract

The research sought, based on scripts located in the trajectories of the political families of Antônio Carlos Magalhães and José Richa, to highlight the arrangements between political power and family structures. The Magalhães families in Bahia and Richa in Paraná, gathered and accumulated mainly economic and political-family capital to maintain power in and between political families. Thus, based on the genealogical method and the life stories of Bertaux (2020), we seek to understand the logic that moves and guides the political field, marked by the presence of political families. The descendants of these political families resort to inherited political-family capital, when faced with unfavorable political contexts or adhere to the rules of the institutional game. Thus, with the help of Oliveira (2007; 2012) on nepotism and its perpetuation in the various spheres of power, we can see how kinship relations are essential in the current political model and can elucidate many of the relationships that characterize them.