This paper calculates indexes for the funding levels of municipal retirement systems in Brazil using actuarial valuations and budget reports aiming to test hypotheses regarding the reasons which have driven underfunding in the past years notwithstanding the 1998 and 2003 reforms and the greater...

This paper offers a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the effects of malapportionment on partisan bias, that is, the uneven distribution of legislative seats among parties for votes received. Specifically, it examines such effect in the Brazilian Lower Chamber from 1994 to 2010. First, we...

Lobbying regulation initiatives have been developed, especially in liberal democracies, based on two main questions. The first refers to the most powerful interest groups' advantages in the political process in comparison to others who do not have the necessary resources to professionalize their...

This study analyses the political correlates of the use of provisionary decrees (medidas provisórias) by Brazilian presidents in law-making. It is argued that the intense use of this legislative tool reflects a tacit delegation of agenda powers from the Congress to the Executive branch, and...

The work has as its starting point the near consensus in the literature about the Brazilian Congress, particularly on the Chamber of Deputies, according to which rules and procedures inside this institution do not present effective incentives for the development of expertise and legislators...

This paper explores how malapportionment affects the way Brazilian federal government allocates its resources to subnational units. Specifically, we argue that over-represented subnational units receive more per capita in discretionary federal spending because the executive seeks its legislative...

This study investigates the relationship between electoral donations made by industrial entrepreneurs and the behavior of federal deputies elected for the 54th legislature (2011-2015), with regard to the presentation of legislative proposals favorable or contrary to the interests of that...

This study investigates the performance of interest groups in standing committees from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, in the 2011-2015 legislature. It is based on the premise that two activities are the main strategies of these groups to influence the legislative process: corporate campaign...