Media Exposure of Portfolios as a Measure of Relevance ,

Pedro Feliú Ribeiro,Luís Henrique Alves Cordeiro Martins

doi:10.1590/1981-3821202100010005

Pedro Feliú Ribeiro, Luís Henrique Alves Cordeiro Martins

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-3821202100010005

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Abstract

The distribution of ministerial portfolios in the formation of government coalitions in Brazilian presidentialism is a crucial factor in determining the governability of the political system. Objective measurement of the relevance of ministries to political parties offers a means of shedding light on the relations between the executive and legislative branches of Brazil’s government. This research note aims to improve the empirical measurement of the relevance of Federal ministries in negotiations between presidents and political parties by including a fundamental theoretical aspect to political behavior: the media exposure of the various ministries. Given the importance of the media in shaping the political agenda and public opinion, we have expanded the theoretical conceptualization of the means to effect such measurements by adding a construct of ministerial relevance that is exogenous to the government apparatus. We have made empirical use of concepts such as the relative prestige of the various ministries and the degree of public exposure to them by quantifying the frequency of their appearances on the front pages of the three Brazilian newspapers with the largest readerships. Our results demonstrate the empirical utility and theoretical complementarity of the insertion of a variable relating to media exposure into Batista’s ministerial relevance (2017).

Highlights

In addition to describing our empirical procedures, we present the results of inserting the media variable into the ministerial importance index for the two terms of President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and the first term of President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2014), by ranking all ministries according to four variables: the degree of media exposure, positions, budget and legislative initiative
This research note is structured as follows: In the second section, which follows this introduction, we briefly review the literature on the importance of the media for legislators and political parties, highlighting their influence on shaping the political agenda and their theoretical-conceptual relevance
Methodology and results In order to determine the degree of media exposure of ministries, we chose to use the front pages of the three Brazilian print newspapers with the largest readerships, the Folha de São Paulo, O Estado de São Paulo and O Globo

Summary

Media Exposure of Portfolios as a Measure of Relevance

Measurement of the relevance of ministries during negotiations aimed at forming a governing congressional coalition is key for understanding the relations between the executive and legislative branches of Brazil’s federal government (AMORIM NETO, 2006; BATISTA, 2013; RAILE et al, 2011). We must measure to what degree each ministry confers on its minister the power to shape public policy, to what degree it is endowed with staff vacancies that can be distributed to allies and to what degree it offers public exposure, as all of these capacities may lead to advanced potential electoral prospects for parties and legislators wishing to occupy its highest office (AMORIM NETO and SAMUELS, 2010) In this connection, an excellent study has been undertaken by Batista (2017). The frequency with which ministries appear on the front pages of major newspapers offers an excellent source of data to measure the degree of public exposure of a given portfolio, as it is a variable that can be counted daily in an ongoing, consistent and accessible manner.

With Media

Extraction sums of squared loadings

Media Budget

Findings

Conclusion