Ministerial Wishlist and Coalition Bargaining: Portfolio Allocation in Brazil

• In Event: Comparative Studies of Elite Political Behavior

Abstract

This proposal aims to contribute to the growing literature on coalition formation by analyzing the relationship between ministerial salience and portfolio allocation. Specifically, we examine how political parties' legislative preferences, as a measure of ministerial salience, affect the distribution of ministerial portfolios in coalitional governments. This research question is particularly relevant given recent studies that have called into question whether formateurs strategically use ministerial salience to compensate for the disproportionate allocation of portfolios to parties, which is a key concern in presidential systems where the ministerial bonus is less proportional.

Previous studies of coalition presidentialism have primarily focused on cabinet coalescence as the main predictor of the behavior of ministers and legislative parties. However, we argue that these analyses have not adequately addressed cross-party variations in ministerial salience. To address this gap in the literature, we propose a novel approach that measures ministerial salience from the signaling of legislators' preferences for portfolios through their legislative actions.

To accomplish this, we use a novel a Bayesian two latent variables model to estimate parties' yearly preferences for ministerial portfolios based on four types of legislators' initiatives: bill proposals, budgetary amendments, formal recommendations to ministerial actions, and floor speeches. With this framework, we recovered yearly estimates of both portfolio salience and parties' preferences over them from 2001 to 2021. We then use a series of conditional logit models to analyze whether parties have been successful in getting the portfolios they desire.

Our proposed study has the potential to make a significant contribution to the literature by providing new insights into the dynamics of coalition bargaining in multiparty systems. We believe that our proposed approach will be well-suited to addressing the research question at hand.

Authors

• Fernando Meireles, IESP-UERJ

• Magna Inácio, Federal University of Minas Gerais

• Rosiene de Andrade, Federal University of Minas Gerais