Political Appointments and Coalition Management in Brazil, 2007-2010
Sérgio Praça, Andréa Freitas, Bruno Hoepers
Abstract
Studies on coalition management in presidential systems usually focus on two types of goods used by the president and formateur party to hold together coalitions: exchange goods (such as individual budget amendments) and coalition goods (such as ministries). This research note analyzes, with an original dataset of party members and political appointees in Brazil, a different type of good: presidential political appointments. Our study shows that partisan political appointees vary greatly among Brazilian ministries and within them. We also found that there is a disconnect between how many seats a political party holds in Congress and the number of political appointment offices it controls. This has implications for the literature on bureaucracy and politics and the literature on coalition management.
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