How Valuable Is a Presidential Cabinet? Measuring Ministries’ Political Attractiveness in Brazil

Abstract

How valuable is a cabinet position? While the current literature does not ignore the reality that ministries differ from one another, it does not offer either theoretical or methodological procedures to assess such differences. This article introduces a refined measure of coalescence degree that considers several characteristics ministries may have, as well as politicians’ preferences about cabinet appointments. We estimate the effect of this alternative measure of coalescence on the president’s legislative success using large Brazilian datasets from 1995 to 2014 and an elite survey conducted with 62 Brazilian legislators. Controlling for other coalition management variables (coalition size and ideological heterogeneity), our refined coalescence metric turns out to be a more appropriate tool to assess the president’s performance in Congress.

Political Support for Sale: Cabinet Appointments and Public Expenditures in Brazil

“…However, if a party is interested in policy activities, all ministries must be weighted with different criteria. This statement directly reflects our main hypothesis, but with one difference: like the above cited authors, and also like Mauerberg and Pereira (2020), we share the view that ministries do have differences among them, with some being more desirable than others, but we still consider that even the ministries with the weakest policy implementation capacities are used to increase the future electoral competitiveness of the party which is responsible for appointing their heads.…”

“…More recent studies have focused on other characteristics of the Brazilian cabinet. Mauerberg and Pereira (2020) carried out a deep study on the specificities of each ministry challenging the early concept of coalescence developed by Amorim Neto (2000). In their study each ministry is considered as different from one another, thus having a different value for allied parties that could control it.…”

Patronage and Presidential Coalition Formation

“…Measurement issues have led us to omit APAs serving in state-owned banks and state-owned enterprises outside the executive bureaucracy (Chaisty et al 2018). Scholars have evaluated the salience of particular ministerial portfolios (Batista 2018, Mauerberg and Pereira 2020, Zucco, Batista, and Power 2019), and similar evaluation of the relative salience of subministerial agencies headed by APAs would likely yield valuable insights. Finally, it would be useful to normatively evaluate the costs of these coalitional strategies.…”

Determinants of the cabinet size in presidential systems

“…In other words, a party that holds 20% of the coalition's legislative contingent should receive a share of 20% of cabinet portfolios. Although this assumption has received some qualitative updates including the attractiveness of each and every portfolio (Camerlo & Coutinho, 2022; Mauerberg & Pereira, 2020), it still constitutes a strong conditioner of cabinet formation. [Correction added on 20 June 2023, after first online publication: Reference has been corrected from 'Camerlo, M., & Gallardo, C. M. (2022).…”