Horizontal accountability is a key challenge to new democracies, and especially so in those regimes where "reactive" legislatures face dominant presidents. Although the 1988 Constitution gives impressive legislative and agenda-setting powers to the Brazilian president, it also equips the...

Horizontal accountability is a key challenge to new democracies, and especially so in those regimes where "reactive" legislatures face dominant presidents. Although the 1988 Constitution gives impressive legislative and agenda-setting powers to the Brazilian president, it also equips the...

How do presidents win legislative support under conditions of extreme multipartism? Comparative presidential research has offered two parallel answers, one relying on distributive politics and the other claiming that legislative success is a function of coalition formation. We merge these...

How do political actors value different portfolios? We propose a new approach to measuring portfolio salience by analysing paired comparisons using the Bradley-Terry model. Paired-comparison data are easy to collect using surveys that are user-friendly, rapid, and inexpensive. We implement the...

In a recent article published in LARR, Simone Bohn analyzed electoral results and survey data from Brazil to contest several theses concerning the reelection of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2006. In particular Bohn asserted that beneficiaries of Bolsa Familia, a conditional cash...