What's wrong with the Brazilian Congress

So, Bea, uh, Brazilian Congress has never been this powerful, uh, especially in this post-dictatorship era.

In the early years of that re-democratization, most laws came from the executive branch, but now Congress is asserting itself more, and it now controls also a massive chunk of the federal budget, what we call, uh, the emendas parlamentares, or the budgetary grants.

And they have more power over the purse than arguably any other Western legislature.

So how did that happen? Because Congress asserting itself is not bad per se, but what is happening in Brazil, what are the good things about it, and what are the bad things about it?

So the short version is, uh, this process did not happen overnight, and it did not happen through one big reform.

It's the accumulation of about two decades of smaller shifts, plus I think a couple of turning points.

For most of the post-dictator period, the president really did run the show in Brazil.

So, uh, if you look at earlier works, uh, uh, done in political science between 1988 and the early 2000s, about 85% of the laws that got approved originated in the presidency, and the odds of Congress actually, uh, killing a presidential bill were under 3%.

I think the f- to me, and that's what, uh, we, we write in the, the policy papers, that the first, uh, turning point was in 2001, when Congress reformed how provisional decrees work.

Provisional decrees are like, uh, executive orders in the US.

Um, they work a little bit different, but I think that's the, the most appropriate comparison I can think about right now.

Uh, so what Congress did, did is they capped their validity, required a joint committee to review them, uh, ended the practice of the president just reissuing the same decree over and over again.

Uh, that reform forced a negoti- forced negotiation in a way that, uh, hadn't existed before.

And then in 2009, uh, researchers in political science, they document that was the first year, uh, that deputies and senators passed more bill of their own, uh, sponsorship than the president.

Um, from there, I think, I think it's cumulative.

Congress starts building up, um, technical capacity.

Uh, legislative consultancies, uh, hire more qualified people.

Committees, uh, at that point at least, uh, start working as, uh, policy shops, uh, approving, uh, legislation.

And then, uh, we have been discussing this a lot in Brazil recently, in 2015 and '19, two rounds of budget reforms, uh, made a chunk of the federal budget, uh, constitutionally guaranteed to individual and party amendments.

Uh, that was the money that the president used to, uh, be able to, uh, to negotiate and, uh, reward allies and punish non-allies.

Uh, that money now is just owned.

That's the budgetary, uh, amendments or grants that you were referring to.

Uh, we don't know the extent to which that shifted leverage.

I, I am involved in a research project myself trying to figure that out.

Uh, part of the literature says that it has, part of the literature says that it hasn't, so we're trying to understand that.