Patronage and Presidential Coalition Formation (original) (raw)
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Political Appointments and Coalition Management in Brazil, 2007-2010
Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2011
Studies on coalition management in presidential systems usually focus on two types of goods used by the president and formateur party to hold together coalitions: exchange goods (such as individual budget amendments) and coalition goods (such as ministries). This research notes analyzes, with an original dataset of party members and political appointees in Brazil, a different type of good: presidential political appointments. Our study shows that partisan political appointees vary greatly among Brazilian ministries and within them. We also found that there is a disconnect between how many seats a political party holds in Congress and the number of political appointment offices it controls. This has implications for the literature on bureaucracy and politics and the literature on coalition management.
Presidential Political Appointments and Coalition Governance in Brazil, 2007-2010
2011
Research on the relationship between the Executive and the Legislative in Brazil has generated a voluminous literature that sheds important light on our understanding of the policy-making process in Brazil and the relationship between the Executive and the political parties in Congress. However, little is known about how the bureaucracy is used as a tool for political patronage and its overall role in the policy-making. We aim to advance the understanding of this phenomena by studying which factors explain the distribution of political appointee positions in the Brazilian federal bureaucracy among political parties. By using an unique panel dataset and applying an One-Way Random Effects GLS regression model we found that the number of seats a party has in the lower Chamber, the party's appointment of a cabinet minister, and being from the same party as the president's (formateur party) play a fundamental role at explaining why some parties are more able to fill political appointees' positions with their party members in the bureaucracy than others. These findings lend credence to the idea that appointments in the Brazilian bureaucracy can be better understood as "coalition goods" (by establishing an exchange baseline between the partisent's party and the parties in the coalition) instead of "exchange goods" (as tools that help cover the ongoing costs of holding together the coalition).
The aim of our study is to investigate what leads Brazilian politicalparties to join the Government coalition in Congress. We analyze theprobability of success and the duration of all bills sponsored by legisla-tors in the Brazilian Congress since redemocratization. The goal of ouranalyses is to capture the effect of joining in the government coalitionon the legislative performance of representatives. Today it is well doc-umented that the legislative behavior of Congressmen is explained byparty principles in Brazil. The President, whose legislative powers wereenhanced by the 1988 Constitution, is in practice the agenda settler of the Congress. Yet we know little about what leads political parties to join the Government coalition and support the President in Congress.Our study sheds light on a fundamental question regarding the govern-ability under Multiparty Presidentialism: why parties decide to makepart of a particular coalition? Did the participants of the Governmentcoalition have greater success in approving bills? In this case, the advan-tage of being a member of the ruling coalition would not be just accessto public jobs and government resources, it would rather be motivatedby the benefit in producing public policies. We analyze the probabilityof success and the duration of all – over 30,000 – bills sponsoredby legislators in the Brazilian Congress since re-democratization to cap-ture the effect of joining in the government coalition on the legislativeperformance. Our results indicate that the effect of integrating the gov-ernment coalition in the chances of bill approval is conditional to theshare os sets controlled by the party.
Beyond Brazilian Coalition Presidentialism: The Appropriation of the Legislative Agenda
Even though they possess several power resources, Brazilian Presidents also elaborate their legislative proposals based upon bills already being processed in Congress through a phenomenon called Appropriation of the legislative agenda. In this paper I examine the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs by means of a typology and a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). I conclude that Appropriation provides the President with the expansion of the formal support base by controlling the agenda of allied and opposition parties as well as obtaining the "paternity" of several policies already in motion in Congress, thus enabling a public association of the President’s actions and his or her party with the possibility of social benefits. Be it in the pursuit of promising agendas or for the maintenance of their own dominance, Appropriation shows that Brazilian presidents must go beyond Coalition Presidentialism.
In this paper, I explore how a change in the decision-making process of the presidential decree authority in 2001 increased the benefits of coalition partners over policy contents of the presidential decrees. The reform of 2001 limited the capacity of the president to legislate unilaterally; instead, it became s t r a t e g i c f o r t h e p r e s i d e n t to initiate legislative changes by Executive decrees o n l y with legislative support based on the cabinet positions in the government. I suggest that the new rule has influenced the policy content of decrees that affect the policy-making strategies of presidents. The empirical analysis of changes to presidential decrees over time suggests that the value of belonging to the ruling coalition increases with the procedural advantages of the government's legislative power. The majority, in turn, provide the numbers to keep the coalition hold on power secure. My hypothesis is that balance between policy and legislative support is achieved through the elaborate intralegislative distribution of procedural privileges. My empirical analysis will test a spatial model based on changes of decree power procedures in the Brazilian multiparty system. I suggest that the effect of the reform of the presidential agenda powers increases the policy advantages that coalition members with cabinet positions can extract from the participation in the Government.
Coalition brokers or breakers? Brazilian governors and legislative voting
2001
Reforms to decentralize political power to subnational goverernments have taken place in scores of countries during recent decades. Gubernatorial influence can complicate the formation and maintenance of national-level political coalitions. This paper examines the relationship between state-level politics and legislative coalitions through an analysis of voting in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. We measure the voting unity of Brazilian national parties and state-level party and coalition cohorts to Congress. We develop models to estimate the influence of governors on the unity of their legislative allies, and we test these models on data from recorded legislative votes from 1989-1998. Controlling for legislative period and for the generic levels of unity specific to each party, governors exert a net drag on the voting unity of their state party and coalition cohorts. This is consistent with a model in which governors compete with other principals -specifically national-level party and coalitions leaders -to influence legislative votes.
Watchdogs in Our Midst: How Presidents Monitor Coalitions in Brazil's Multiparty Presidential Regime
Latin American Politics and Society, 2017
When delegating governing tasks to a coalition partner, the president would like to give a minister ample administrative powers to be able to effectively accomplish the political mission. Due to information asymmetries, the president runs the risk that this discretion might be used to pursue policy outcomes that may harm the presi-dent's preferences. This trade-off between delegation and control is key to understanding governance strategies the president chooses to minimize agency risks and coordinate public policies. With Brazil as a case study, this article demonstrates that presidents have strategically made frequent use of junior ministers as watchdogs of coalition partners, especially when coalition allies are ideologically distant from the president's preferences. Yet neither the portfolio salience nor the presi-dent's decision to share powers with coalition partners proportionally seems to interfere in such strategic decisions. P residents in multiparty presidential regimes face a constant political dilemma: in order to govern and to sustain majority coalitions over time, presidents must allocate cabinet positions to coalition partners, granting them access to the policy and budgetary resources of the executive. At the same time, by delegating such political authority to parties in coalitions, presidents run the risk of being expropriated by appointed cabinet ministers who may not fully share the president's preferences. This is a typical agency problem. Delegating cabinet positions to coalition partners, the president gains legislative support to maintain a successful legislative agenda. However, once in control of a portfolio, the minister may pursue an agenda other than the president's.
The Internal Organization of Brazilian Legislatures and Presidential Success
This abstract analyses the effects of the intercameral dynamics of the legislative process on the presidential success, in the context of the Brazilian “coalition presidentialism”. The main hypothesis of the essay is that the differences between the internal organization of the House of Representatives and of the Senate affect the coordination of the government coalitions during the legislative process as well as the presidential success in that arena. The legislative chambers offer different institutional incentives and opportunities for the congressmen and the oppositional coalitions to make known their individual preferences. In contrast to the literature that explains the presidential success in the legislative process through the formation of legislative cartels, this article points out the operational difference of this cartel in each legislative chamber. In special, the essay states that the internal organization of those chambers redefines the strategic advantages of the oppositional parties in terms of dealing with the impatience of the government in approving its legislative agenda. The article compares the deliberative process of four amendments to the Brazilian Constitution related to the Provisory Contribution of Financial Transactions (CPMF); which has been part of the presidential agenda since 1993, as one of the main sources of budget revenues of the Federal Government.
Coalitional Stability and the Gains from Trade between the Executive and the Legislature in Brazil
2001
O Congresso brasileiro apresenta um grande potencial para ganhos de trocas. O problema de coordenação dentro do Congresso é resolvido pela concessão pela Constituição ao Presidente de diversos poderes legislativos. Estes poderes incluem: 1) o poder de estabelecer o status quo através de medidas provisórias; 2) autoridade exclusiva de iniciar determinados tipos de legislação; 3) exclusividade sobre a execução do orçamento; 4) o direito de nomear seu gabinete (sujeito à aprovação do Senado); 5) enorme poder discricionário sobre empregos no governo federal. O Presidente usa estes poderes para manter a estabilidade da coalizão entre os partidos que ele representa, o que permite que se implemente uma agenda de políticas e reformas. Se o Presidente não possuísse tais poderes, seria de esperar que o processo legislativo apresentaria grande instabilidade ou uma grande paralisia. Além disto, conceder poderes preponderantes ao Presidente como forma de estabilizar o processo decisório no Congresso pode ser um mecanismo superior ao sistema com comissões fortes ou um partido dominante. O Presidente, mais do que os membros do Congresso têm os interesses nacionais na sua função de utilidade, i.e. crescimento econômico e desigualdade de renda. Dado as instituições legislativas atuais, se o Presidente não possuísse fortes poderes legislativos, esperaríamos encontrar comportamento mais individualistas pelos congressistas e políticas menos prudentes.
BPSR, 2019
The article aims at understanding the determinants of ministerial turnover in presidential systems. There are essentially three key factors that govern the propensity for ministerial turnover in a presidential system: 01. political ambition-reflected in the individual or collective strategies and tactics employed by the party-affiliated actors represented in the cabinet; 02. the presence or absence of a governing coalition-which has bearing on the degree of ideological distance between the president and such political parties as form part of any governing coalition, with consequences for ministerial scrutiny; and 03. accountability-a determinant in responding to such external pressures as may be brought to bear by public opinion. In order to investigate the impacts of these factors, this inquiry seeks to analyze the new and dynamic democracy of Brazil. Brazil's presidential system presents interesting features that make it an excellent laboratory in which to test hypotheses concerning every aspect of ministerial turnover. To this end, this paper employs a multivariate methodology, as well as descriptive and survival analyses, based on a comprehensive and original database of cabinet ministers that draws on three presidencies over five democratically elected governments from 1995 to 2014. Among other results, our most original finding was that there is an inverse correlation between the degree of ministerial politicization (political ambition) and ideological distance from the president during political scandals (interaction between the governing coalition and accountability) on the one hand, and the length of ministerial tenure on the other.