Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Presidential Bicameralism: Legislative Politics in Brazil

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

What consequences do bicameral legislatures have for legislative processes and outcomes? Democratization of authoritarian regimes has brought about the rapid expansion of presidential bicameral systems. With the numerical expansion, different forms of presidential bicameralism emerged. Unlike the U.S. separation of powers system, many of these new presidential democracies endow their presidents with substantial legislative powers. This growth of presidential bicameral systems has created an unprecedented opportunity to inquire into the workings and consequences of such political systems, but both empirical and theoretical research on such systems has lagged behind. To date, virtually no theoretical or empirical research has been conducted on presidential bicameralism in which the president plays a major legislative role. Prior studies of legislative politics in new presidential democracies have instead concentrated on presidential-lower chamber relations or modeled bicameral legislatures as if there were only one chamber. Neglect of bicameral relations in legislative research is problematic because if rules that govern bicameral relations differ from country to country and/or from one type of bill to another, then their consequences are likely to differ as well. Moreover, modeling a bicameral legislature as a single chamber would lead one to misleading conclusions and introduce a bias in the results of research. By building on spatial theory and bargaining literatures, this project uncovers the ways in which the inter-chamber interplay in bicameral legislatures and their interaction with the executive influence the legislative capacity of government and outcomes. By examining the presidential bicameral system in Brazil, this dissertation argues that increases in the rigidity of rules and divergence of the preferences of two chambers raise a political system's propensity for legislative delays and immobilism. Yet, paradoxically bicameral divergence in presidential regimes at times offers important venues to the president to break such a standstill and promote policy change. This project tests these arguments using both quantitative and case study methods with the legislative data from Brazil, 1985-2003. First, an event history analysis tests the effect of (1) bicameral incongruence, (2) different decision rules, and (3) economic and political crises on the speed and the timing of legislation and gridlocks (i.e., failed bills). Second, this project conducts detailed case studies of significant legislation in Brazil to examine the strategic interaction between and among the president and upper- and lower-chambers. Brazil is an ideal case to examine the arguments of this project for four reasons. First, Brazil's legislative system is that of presidential bicameralism with substantive executive legislative powers the type that is particularly understudied. Second, much debate exists about the causes of legislative gridlock in Brazil, but no work has examined the Brazilian bicameral system as a potential cause. Third, due to variation in decision rules, Brazil offers a natural experimental setting to explore, by holding country-specific factors constant, how different decision rules affect legislative outcomes. Finally, but not the least important, the legislative data necessary to test the arguments of this project are available in Brazil. Previous field research verified the availability of legislative data through the Centro de Informatica e Processamento de Dados of the Federal Senate (quantitative data on the timing and speed of legislation), and the Chamber of Deputies Library and the Senate's Secretaria de Documentacao e Informacao (legislative history of individual legislation). In addition, personal interviews with legislators and presidential aides will be carried out to collect information not available in aggregate form. The results of this dissertation have broad implications in at least two areas. First, they contribute to the development of theories of, and research on, bicameralism and legislative gridlock. Second, they offer an important point of reference for designing political institutions.