Com a palavra, o líder: como as lideranças partidárias interferem no processo legislativo no Brasil

Abstract

This thesis investigates the role of the coalition's party leaders in coordinating the decisionmaking process in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. According to the party explanation, the president’s constitutional prerogatives, combined with the decision-making centralization carried out by the leaders, are responsible for high levels of party discipline in the Legislature and for the Executive’s dominance and success in lawmaking observed in the post-redemocratization period. This explanation became highly influential in Brazilian Political Science and opened space for the diversification of research in the area, especially about the first part of the argument, concerning presidential powers. However, despite the importance attributed to party leaders, few studies have empirically and deeply examined the work performed by these actors in legislative coordination. We know that leaders dominate resources that are expensive to parliamentary activity, such as speaking spaces, control nominations for important legislative positions and have influence in the so-called Colégio de Líderes (College of Leaders), but there is little evidence about the processes and causal mechanisms that connect the actions of leaders with their respective benches and government to the results of the decision-making process. Considering this gap, this research aims to examine how party leaders coordinate their caucuses and which factors affect their activity and the outcomes produced. We start from the hypothesis that leaders resort to different strategic resources depending on the context, particularly the level of political conflict and the salience of the issue in the Legislature and public opinion. We believe that a “descent” to the level of cases is essential to observe the behavior of leaders and what is at stake in the context of decision-making in each decision-making process. To analyze the cases of interest, we used the case study methodology associated with Process-Tracing to select and analyze in a deep four decision-making processes with different conflict levels around Provisional Measures issued during governments of Lula (2003-2010) and Dilma (2011-2016). The research showed that party leaders, in addition to using formal procedural powers, rely on a variety of informal strategies that are decisive in legislative processes. It also revealed a sort of division of labor between leaders and vice-leaders, suggesting an internal rationalization of the leadership structure. The analysis further demonstrates that neither the leaders' procedural powers, nor patronage, nor control of a legislative majority are sufficient to avoid defeats on key issues for the government. Finally, the research reinforced the need to rethink the traditional criteria for measuring executive success and failure in the decision-making process, given its complex and multifaceted nature.