Diálogos sobre o "ultrapresidencialismo" estadual: dos condicionantes políticos do sucesso legislativo dos governadores brasileiros

Abstract

This thesis aims to contribute to the debate in the literature on subnational political systems in Brazil. The focus is placed on the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches in the states. The starting point is established on the basis of a dialogue with the thesis of "state ultrapresidentialism" by Abrucio for the years that followed the re-democratization. The main objective of this work is to verify if the legislative success of Executive states can be explained by political variables, once variations in time and space can be observed, when the indicators of legislative production are analyzed within different units of the federation. The legislative process was analyzed in Assemblies of nine states: Bahia, Ceará, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo, Pará, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, and Santa Catarina. In the first five states, two legislatures were analyzed (2007/2011 and 2011/2015). In Santa Catarina only the first term was the object of study. For the other states it was analyzed the biennium 2007-2008. In total, fourteen cases were examined. The legislative success was measured by the Executive Power Index (IPE), an alternative measure to the canonical indicator Success Rate. Using as an analysis tool the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), it was possible to verify which conditions were needed and sufficient so that such outcome was obtained. The causal conditions of political nature considered were the size of the opposition and the degree of fragmentation and polarization in the Legislative Assemblies. The hypothesized relationships was that the legislative success of the Executive branch would find better conditions to occur in assemblies where there was no strong opposition and with low levels of fragmentation and polarization taking into account previously established parameters. The basic assumption was that in scenarios with this transaction costs to obtain legislative support would be lower for the Executive. The analysis of necessity showed that the absence of a strong opposition can be considered as a necessary condition for the governors legislative success. The sufficiency analysis, on the other hand, revealed two uniquely settings associated to the legislative success of the Executive branch. Both governors who faced weak opposition, an assembly with less fragmentation and low polarization, as those in which the first two conditions repeated, but the polarization was high, were successful. Thus, the absence of a strong opposition and high levels of fragmentation might be considered as the prime implicants to explain the legislative success in 60% of the cases analyzed. Key-words: Executive-Legislative relations; Legislatives Assemblies; Legislative Sucess; QCA