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Agenda Power in Brazil's Câmara Dos Deputados, 1989–98

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Octavio Amorim Neto ,
Gary W. Cox  and
Mathew D. McCubbins
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This article examines a general proposition about democratic legislatures—that their agenda will be cartelized by any majority government—in the context of a case study of the Brazilian Camara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies). The main question is to identify when consistent agenda control by a single majority coalition, as opposed to agenda control by shifting majorities, has emerged in the post-1988 Camara. Consistent agenda control emerges routinely in parliamentary regimes: the government commands' a majority in the assembly; the legislative agenda is negotiated among the governing parties, typically with each able to veto the placement of bills on the agenda. However, the Camara faces an external executive, the president, with substantial formal powers to set its agenda. Consistent agenda control thus can emerge only if the president chooses to ally with a majority coalition in the assembly. If the president always chooses to form such an alliance—a presidentially led agenda cartel—then one would expect some consistently parliamentary patterns in Brazil: the appointment of legislative party leaders to the cabinet; the use of statutes rather than decrees to achieve policy goals; the avoidance of bills that split the governing coalition. The authors find that only the Cardoso presidency displays consistent evidence of such a presidentially led agenda cartel. In this sense, the argument differs from that of Figueiredo and Limongi, who argue that presidents have consistently pursued a parliamentary mode of governance in Brazil. Yet it also differs from those who argue that presidents have consistently pursued a shifting-coalitions strategy. The results suggest that presidents make a strategic choice, with much hinging on that choice.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , July 2003 , pp. 550 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2003

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References

1 See, for example, Doring, Hebert, “Time as a Scarce Resource: Government Control of the Agenda,” in Doring, Herbert, ed., Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995)Google Scholar; idem, “Parliamentary Agenda Control and Legislative Outcomes in Western Europe,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 26 (February 2001)Google Scholar; Huber, John D., Rationalizing Parliament: Legislative Institutions and Party Politics in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krehbiel, Keith, Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, Gary W., Masuyama, Mikitaka, and McCubbins, Matthew D., “Agenda Power in the Japanese House of Representatives,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 1 (May 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, Gary W. and McCubbins, Mathew D., “Agenda Power in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1877 to 1986,” in Brady, David W. and McCubbins, Matthew D., eds., Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Campbell, Andrea, Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D., “Agenda Power in the Senate, 1877 to 1986,” in , Brady and , McCubbins; Tsebelis, George and Money, Jeannette, Bicameralism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Tsebelis, George, Veto Players: HOID PoliticalInstitutions Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weingast, Barry R. and Marshall, William, “The Industrial Organization of Congress,” Journal of Political Economy 91 (October 1988)Google Scholar; Laver, Michael and Shepsle, Kenneth A., Making and Breaking Government: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Heller, William B., “Bicameralism and Budget Deficits: The Effect of Parliamentary Structure on Government Spending,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 22 (July 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 Hudson de Abranches, Sérgio H., “Presidencialismo de Coalizão: O Dilema Institucional Brasileiro,” Dados 31 (February 1988)Google Scholar; Ames (fn. 3), 162–67; Neto, Octavio Amorim, “Presidential Cabinets, Electoral Cycles, and Coalition Discipline in Brazil,” in Morgenstern, Scott and Nacif, Benito, eds., Legislative Politics in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999 and 2000).

5 By a pivotal party we mean one whose withdrawal would deprive the government of a majority in the assembly. This is the conventional definition in the literature on government formation. See, e.g., Laver, Michael and Schofield, Norman, Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 Cox and McCubbins (fn. 1).

7 To briefly illustrate one more complex model, suppose that some members of a cartel “disrespect” a veto issued by one of its members, by cooperating with the opposition if need be. They thereby confront the vetoer with a choice of backing down (allowing the current government to continue and the offensive bill to be considered) or resigning (bringing the current government down, thereby postponing action on the bill until a new government can form). Given complete information (all parties know each other's preferences), a threat to resign would be either transparently credible if the threatening party really would prefer to bring down the government, rather than see the bill passed, or transparently noncredible if not. Thus, allowing “disrespect” and assuming complete information would mean that an agenda cartel might split on some bills, leading to some governing parties being rolled. Even in this model, however, parties in the cartel could veto some bills, in a way they could not had they not formed a cartel. One would thus expect parties' roll rates to be lower when they were in government, all else equal—a proposition for which we provide evidence in Table 2.

8 Sometimes in Latin America a legislator belonging to a particular party will take office as a minister purely as an individual, without his or her party's endorsement. We discuss how we handle such cases in a later section.

9 Browne, Eric C. and Franklin, Mark, “Aspects of Coalition Payoffs in European Parliamentary Democracies,” American Political Science Review 67 (April 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Budge, Ian and Keman, Hans, Parties and Democracy: Coalition Formation and Government Functioning in Twenty States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

10 Among those examining law production are Döring (fn. 1); Krehbiel (fn. 1); and Tsebelis (fn. 1). Focusing on unsuccessful opposition are Cox, Masuyama, and McCubbins (fn. 1); Cox and McCubbins (fn. 1); and Campbell, Cox, and McCubbins (fn. 1).

11 Cox, Masuyama, and McCubbins (fn. 1). For the House, see Cox and McCubbins (fn. 1); for the Senate, see Campbell, Cox, and McCubbins (fn. 1).

12 A U-shaped pattern in party rolls clearly precludes left-connected and right-connected cartels. But what if a cartel consists only of centrist parties? In this case, we would expect all the parties in the cartel to have near zero roll rates, whereas in the absence of a cartel only the median party would have such a roll rate. Thus, a U-shaped pattern clearly precludes a “centered” cartel only if the parties immediately to the left and right of the median party have significantly higher roll rates than does the median party. This of course may be asking a lot of the data, in the sense that, even if it were true that no cartel existed, there might not be enough policies on which the median party and the party immediately on its right (left) disagreed to generate a significant increase in the latter's roll rate.

13 Recall that by definition an agenda cartel includes a controlling share of agenda-setting offices. As we shall see, the president has such large powers that it is not possible to create a coalition that excludes him and yet can control the agenda.

14 Pereira, Carlos and Mueller, Bernardo, “Uma Teoria de Preponderância do Executivo: O Sistema de comissões no Legilsativo Brasileiro,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Socials 15 (2000)Google Scholar.

15 Mainwaring, Scott, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 88–174Google Scholar.

16 Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999 and 2000).

17 See Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,2000), 164–65.

18 Superurgency is our translation from the Portuguese of what in Brazilian legislative jargon is called urgência urgentíssima.

19 Superurgency appears analogous to “extractive” special rules in the U.S. House, with the Mesa in the role of the rules committee.

20 Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999), 58.

21 See Figueiredo, Argelina C. and Limongi, Fernando, “O Congresso e as Medidas Provisórias: Abdicação ou Delegação,” Novos Estudos Cebrap 47 (March 1997)Google Scholar. Note that in September 2001 the Brazilian Congress enacted a constitutional amendment determining that provisional measures would have to be voted on in sixty days and could be reissued only once.

22 These figures were culled from Federal, Brazil—Senado, Levantamento e Reedições de Medidas Provisórias: Dados Atualizados em 28 de Fevereiro de 1999 (Brasília: Senado Federal—Subsecretaria de Informações, 1999)Google Scholar.

23 On the politics of provisional measures in Brazil, see Neto, Octavio Amorim and Tafner, Paulo, “Governos de Coalizão e Mecanismos de Alarme de Incêndio no Controle Legislative das Medidas Provisórias,” Dados 45 (April 2002)Google Scholar; Figueiredo, Argelina C. and Limongi, Fernando, “O Congresso e as Medidas Provisórias: Abdicação ou Delegação,” Novos Estudos Cebrap 47 (November 1997)Google Scholar; Figueiredo and Limongi 1999 (fn. 3,1999 and 2000); Monteiro, Jorge Vianna, “Condicionamentos Institucionais das Medidas Provisórias,” Revista de Administração Pública 34 (June 2000)Google Scholar; Power, Timothy J., “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Congress: Presidential Decree Power in Brazil,” in Carey, John M. and Shugart, Matthew S., eds., Executive Decree Authority (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Reich, Gary, “Executive Decree Authority in Brazil: How Reactive Legislators Influence Policy,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 27 (January 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On decree powers in a comparative perspective, see John M. Carey and Matthew S. Shugart, “Calling Out the Tanks or Filling Out the Forms?” in Carey and Shugart.

24 Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3, 2000), 156.

25 For further details, see the rules posted at www.camara.gov.br.

26 Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999), 62–63.

27 Note that a good deal of information on floor decisions will be lost by focusing on roll calls, because, as mentioned, there are also secret votes and voice votes in Brazil. However, roll calls do constitute a sample of the most controversial decisions made on thefloor;Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999).

28 The agenda-setting votes that we include are urgency requests, petitions to anticipate consideration of a bill, the admissibility of a presidential decree, petitions to extend a legislative session, proposals to dismember a bill, petitions to end a floor debate, petitions to withdraw an urgency request, petitions to withdraw bills from the agenda, proposals to vote on a report on a bill, petitions to nullify the enactment of a bill by a committee, and petitions to give priority to a bill.

29 The PPB was formed in 1995 as a result of the merger of the PPR and the PP. The PP was created in 1993 by the merger of the PST and PTR. The PPR resulted from the merger of the PDS and the PDC in 1993. For the purpose of simplicity the Figueiredo and Limongi roll-call data bank treats all these right-wing parties as a single party for the whole 1989–99 period. Wefollowtheir procedure in this article.

30 We follow Michael Coppedge, “A Classification of Latin American Political Parties,” Kellog Institute Working Paper, no. 244 (1997); Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999), chap. 4; Mainwaring (fn. 15); Guillermo Rosas and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, “Ideological Dimensions and Left-Right Semantics in Latin America” (Paper presented at the meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, 2000). Were we to use the ideological classification provided by Scott Mainwaring, Rachell Meneguello, and Timothy J. Power, the main change would be the PSDB taking the center position in 1995–98 and the PMDB going to the center-left in this same period; see Mainwaring, Meneguello, and Power, “Conservative Parties, Democracy, and Economic Reform in Contemporary Brazil,” in Middlebrook, Kevin J., ed., Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. This would not alter our conclusion, articulated and defended in the text below, that there was a solid presidentially led cartel in this period.

31 Amorim Neto (fn. 4), 56.

32 Readers interested in a finer-grained breakdown of the data may contact Octavio Amorim Neto at [email protected].

33 Note that we are dealing here with the universe of relevant votes, not a sample. From this perspective, we can be sure that these roll rates exceed 5 percent. If one wishes to view the actually observed roll calls as samples from a larger universe of “what might have happened” under the given president, then the issue arises as to whether the observed proportions could have been generated by random sampling from a population with mean 5 percent roll rate. From this perspective, one can reject the null of sampling from a population with mean 5 percent roll rate at the .14, .06 and .10 levels, respectively, for Collor 1, Collor 3 + 4 and Franco 1–5.

34 Ames (fn. 3), 162–67; Amorim Neto (fn. 4); Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999).

35 Data on the party affiliation (if any) of cabinet ministers were culled from Alves de Abreu, Alzira, Beloch, Israel, Lattman-Weltman, Fernando, and Tadeu de Niemeyer Lamarāo, Sérgio, Dicionário Histórico-Biográfico Brasileiro Pós-1930, 5 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2001)Google Scholar, and provided by Anônio Octávio Cintra and José L. M. Dias. Additional sources include: for Sarney: Keesing's Contemporary Archives 31, no. 6 (1985), 33642–50; Veja (a weekly magazine) (February 12, 1986), 16–21; Veja (January 11, 1989), 34–36; for Collor: Veja (March 14, 1990), 26–31; Veja, (April 15, 1992), 18–26; for Franco: Veja (October 7,1992), 34–49; Jornal do Brasil (a Rio de Janeiro—based daily newspaper), August 20, 1993, 2; Jornal do Brasil, August 21, 1993, 4; Jornal do Brasil, August 29,1993, 12; for Cardoso: Istoé (a weekly magazine) (January 4,1995), 21–22.

36 Note that, given frequent partyjumping in Brazil, we used the yearly legislative size of the parties to calculate the cabinet time per seat.

37 Neto, Octavio Amorim and Santos, Fabiano, “The Executive Connection: Presidentially Defined Factions and Party Discipline in Brazil,” Party Politics 7 (April 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Data on budgetary expenditures in 1993–98 were provided by the Secretaria de Orcamento Federal (Federal Budget Office) upon e-mail request. For the 1989–92 period the source was Brazil—Ministério da Fazenda, Balanço Geral da União, vol. 2 (Brasilia: Secretaria do Tesouro Nacional, n.d.).

39 Bradley Palmquist, “Analysis of Proportions Data” (Manuscript, Vanderbilt University, 1999, available at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/psci/palmquist).

40 Because we include a lag, the number of observations falls to sixty-three. All our results are qualitatively similar if no lags are included.

41 One might argue that a budget share per seat of unity is too low to reflect full membership in the cabinet. After all, if only a fraction of the parties in the Chamber get into government and they divide the full budget among themselves, each will have a higher-than-unity budget share per seat. However, Brazilian cabinets always contain nonparty ministers, who take up a certain portion of the budget. Thus, a value of unity does reflect a “full” membership in the cabinet.

42 The increase in the roll rate is expressed here as a percentage of the government roll rate.

43 Coppedge (fn. 30); Mainwaring (fn. IS).

44 To approve a complementary law requires an absolute majority of the Chamber's membership, whereas the approval of statutes only takes a majority of the voting deputies. Thus, it is harder to pass complementary laws than statutes. Constitutional amendments are even harder to pass: they require a 60 percent majority of the Chamber's membership.

45 It could be argued that if we also look at the number of decrees that were simply reissued or were reissued with modifications in their texts, the nice consistency between cabinet design and presidential policy-making found in Cardoso 1 + 2 would evaporate. After all, Cardoso simply reissued 1,997 decrees and reissued 453 decrees with their texts modified, while Sarney reissued 20 and modified 2, Col-lor re-emitted 20 and changed 21, and Franco reissued 326 and modified 37. Presidents have to reissue decrees when Congress does not vote on them in time. According to Amorim Neto and Tafner (fn. 18), in general, Congress does not promptly deliberate on decrees so as not to waste its time on less relevant issues. Seventy percent of the decrees deal with minor questions relating to the grant of credits, transfers of budgetary appropriations, civil servants, and the organization of public administration. So when the executive reissues a decree, this means that the Congress is implicitly delegating the executive powers to legislate on issues toward which the legislative majority is indifferent. Such delegation is more likely precisely when the president and the majority have colluded under a coalition agreement or, in the terms of this article, have formed a presidentially led cartel. As for the reissuance of decrees with their texts modified, Amorim Neto and Tafner argue that this is a mechanism that allows deputies to make ex post amendments to original decrees, thus helping better coordinate the preferences of presidents and legislators who have colluded under a coalition agreement. The modifications effected in original decrees are designed precisely to address the demands pressed by the government's allies and not those of the opposition. As Cardoso led a strong cartel, this explains in part why he had the highest average of reissued decrees with modified text.

46 Power(fn.23), 194.

47 Ames (fn. 3), 176–80.

48 Data provided by Argelina C. Figueiredo and Fernando Limongi.

49 See “Brizola promete ajudar Collor,” O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), March 8,1991.

50 See “Uma chuva de dinheiro no Rio,” O Globo, May 23,1991.

51 Power (fn. 23), 211.

52 Ames(fn. 3), 192–94.

53 Deheza, Grace Ivana, “Gobiernos de Coalición en el Sistema Presidencial: America del Sur” (Ph.D. diss., European University Institute, Florence, 1997)Google Scholar.

54 Abreu et al. (fn. 35).

55 Yet another way in which one might decide whether a particular president has majority support is more behavioral and yields the same conclusion. Using the data provided by Amorim Neto (fn. 4), 64, we can calculate a president's “average support level” as the seat share of his nominal support coalition, times the average percentage of his nominal supporters who actually vote in accordance with the recommendations of the government leader in the assembly on critical roll calls (that is, those on which at least 60 percent of the legislators vote and at least 20 percent of those voting are in the minority). If the parties in the nominal support coalition offer completely reliable support, then the average support level will equal the nominal coalition size; otherwise, the average support level will fall short of that size, reflecting the absence of a successful deal to trade portfolios for votes. Calculating the average support level for each presidential cabinet in our period, and defining majority governments as those with average support in excess of 50 percent, we find that—again—only Cardoso 2 qualifies as a majority government.

56 We continue to ignore Collor 2, which lasted only a few months and generated only two usable roll calls. Suppose one thought that Collor 2 did constitute an agenda cartel (since the only governing party, the PFL, has a zero roll rate). There are a variety of reasons to doubt this judgment but, even if one arrived at it, one would merely have found a case of a minority government that did cartelize the agenda, as frequently occurs in the European cases. This would not conflict with the cartel thesis.

57 For, if sufficient support is not lined up, then what was the point of the bargaining to begin with?

58 Samuels, David, Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 9.

59 Strom, Kaare, Minority Government and Majority Rule (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

60 Cheibub, José Antonio, “Minority Governments, Deadlock Situations, and the Survival of Presidential Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies 35 (April 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Compare James Druckman and Michael F. Thies, who find that bicameralism significantly decreases the duration of governments in parliamentary systems; see , Druckman and , Thies, “The Importance of Concurrence: The Impact of Bicameralism on Government Formation and Duration,” American Journal of Political Science 46 (September 2002)Google Scholar.

62 Morgenstern, Scott, “Organized Factions and Disorganized Parties: Electoral Incentives in Uruguay,” Party Politics 7 (March 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Comparing average Rice indices of cohesion for 1991–95 and 1995–99, one finds two parties decreasing their cohesion: the PMDB (13 percentage points) and the PPB (5 points). Two parties exhibited small increases: the PT (3 points) and PDT (5 points). Three parties exhibited somewhat larger increases: the PSDB, PTB and PFL (all 12–14 points). Considering the size of the respective parties, there is not much net change in the cohesiveness of the parties with which a president would have to deal in forming a cartel.

64 Samuels, David, “Concurrent Elections, Discordant Results: Presidentialism, Federalism, and Governance in Brazil,” Comparative Politics 33 (January 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Figueiredo and Limongi (fn. 3,1999), 101.

66 Even minority governments must maintain a majority who tolerate their existence.

67 Altman, David, “The Politics of Coalition Formation and Survival in Multiparty Presidential Regimes” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2001)Google Scholar; Neto, Octavio Amorim, “Of Presidents, Parties, and Ministers: Cabinet Formation and Legislative Decision-Making under Separation of Powers” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998)Google Scholar; Cox, Gary W. and Mogenstern, Scott, “Latin America's Reactive Assemblies and Proactive Presidents,” Comparative Politics 33 (March 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.