thumb|373x373px|Cartoon on the Careta magazine satyrizing the "Milk coffee politics". Two planters with hats saying "[[São Paulo (state)|São Paulo" and "Minas Gerais" preventing other states from taking the throne of "President of the Republic"]]
thumb|260px|The states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo
Milk coffee politics or café com leite politics () is a term that refers to the oligarchic domination of Brazilian politics under the so-called Old Republic (1889–1930) by the landed gentries of São Paulo (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by the dairy industry), being represented by the Republican Party of São Paulo (PRP) and the Republican Party of Minas Gerais (PRM).
The name alludes to the popular coffee beverage café com leite, (), referring to the states' respectively dominant industry.
History
Under Brazil's Old Republic, the patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled agrarian oligarchs, especially coffee planters in the state of São Paulo, to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies.
Under the Old Republic, the coffee with milk politics rested on the domination of the republic's politics by the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais — the largest in terms of population and wealth. One can illustrate the extent of that domination by noting that the first presidents of the republic were from São Paulo and thereafter succeeded by an alternation between the outgoing governors of the two leading states in the presidency.
In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in São Paulo would serve to undermine the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of the same state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by dairy interests) — known then by observers as the politics of café com leite. Under Getúlio Vargas, ushered into power by the middle class and agrarian oligarchies of peripheral states resentful of the coffee oligarchs, Brazil moved toward a more centralized state structure that has served to regularize and modernize state governments, moving toward more universal suffrage and secret ballots.