Brazilian Chamber Of Deputies Research Articles

Disputas sobre aborto e diversidade sexual na Câmara dos Deputados nos anos iniciais do governo Bolsonaro: da arte de marcar as diferenças

Abstract The present article explores the disputes in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies about abortion and sexual diversity during the first two years of the Bolsonaro government (2019-2020). Focusing on the controversial moral themes of abortion and sexual diversity, the article examines legislative dynamics by analyzing statements made by congresspeople in the Chamber of Deputies s and the legislative proposals they submitted. This article is based on qualitative research, observing the discursive dynamic of mutual accusations and inversion of arguments. Particularly noteworthy in this context was the heavy engagement of religious actors in the defense of conservative positions.

De-publicization and resistance against the “Escola sem Partido” in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

Resumo: Este artigo investiga os argumentos e as estratégias de ação dos atores políticos e sociais que resistiram às investidas do movimento Escola sem Partido, compreendido como um contramovimento em defesa da “despublicização” da política de Educação. Por meio da análise do conteúdo dos discursos proferidos na Comissão Especial do Escola sem Partido, na Câmara dos Deputados, identificamos que ambos, representantes dos movimentos e dos contramovimentos, utilizam discursos similares, baseados em argumentos científicos, legais e normativos, para defenderem pautas contrárias. A análise dos proferimentos, atores, assim como da dinâmica de votação nesta Comissão Especial, mostra que a obstrução regimental e a judicialização constituíram as principais estratégias mobilizadas pela coalizão contrária ao Escola sem Partido para barrar as pautas despublicizantes sobre a política educacional.

Parliament, citizen and environmental policies: the perception of participants in public hearings in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies on the environment

O artigo analisa as percepções de cidadãos que participaram das audiências públicas promovidas pela Comissão de Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Sustentável (CMADS) da Câmara dos Deputados durante o ano de 2019. Foram aplicados 552 questionários, o que corresponde a uma amostragem de 71,22% do público. A hipótese que guia o estudo é a de que a participação nas audiências públicas é motivada por um conjunto de fatores inter-relacionados, como o vínculo com entidades ambientais, a atuação profissional na área ambiental e a identificação com partidos de orientação ecológica. Os dados confirmam a referida hipótese e mostram que existe um público relativamente assíduo às audiências, em função desses fatores. As percepções apresentam críticas à atuação dos parlamentares e dos representantes de órgãos governamentais no debate e ao baixo desempenho do Congresso Nacional na área de políticas ambientais. Por outro lado, a participação de representantes de entidades ecológicas é avaliada pelos respondentes como positiva, pois contribui para qualificar a discussão.

HOW DOES THE LAW PUT A HISTORICAL ANALOGY TO WORK?: DEFINING THE IMPOSITION OF “A CONDITION ANALOGOUS TO THAT OF A SLAVE” IN MODERN BRAZIL - DOI: 10.12818/P.0304-2340.2020v77p43

Over two decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as the imposition of “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity with an interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors have obtained hundreds of consent agreements and convictions in the labor courts. This article – co-authored by a legal historian, a staff attorney at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, and a federal judge – draws on a massive archive of work site inspection reports to explore the ways in which inspectors and prosecutors give specific meaning to the analogy with chattel slavery. The authors find that the term “slave labor,” in this context, does not depend upon the international law definition of slavery as the exercise over a person of “any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership.” Instead, it identifies specific behaviors that are no longer permissible as between employer and worker, and which reproduce elements of what was once imposed by masters upon slaves. Intermediate normative terms introduced in the 2003 revision of the penal code – which prohibits the subjection of workers to “degrading conditions” and “debilitating work days” – have through the inspection processes taken on specific meaning. Rather than representing subjective notions in potential conflict with the principal of legality, as critics argue, their interpretation has unfolded through careful processes of documentation, negotiation, and prosecution. In Brazil’s current situation of political polarization and institutional fracture, this remarkable campaign against slave labor is coming under fierce attack from large-scale landholders and from elements within the executive, a development which adds urgency to the task of explicating the campaign’s legal bases and operational practices.

Re-defining gender as a heinous crime: A case study from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

In this article, we explore how the discourses around gender are evolving at the core of Brazilian politics. Our focus lies on the discourses at the public hearing on the bill 3.492/19, which aimed at including “gender ideology” on the list of heinous crimes. We aim to identify the deputies’ linguistic representation of social actors as pertaining to in- and outgroups. In addition, the article analyzes through Critical Discourse Analysis how the terminology gender is represented in this particular hearing. The analysis shows how some of the conservative parliamentarians give a clearly negative meaning to the term gender, by labeling it “gender ideology” and additionally connecting it with heinous crimes. We propose that the re-signification of “gender ideology,” from rhetorical invention to heinous crime, is not only an attempt to undermine scientific gender studies but also a way for conservative deputies to gain more political power.

The Influence of the President and Government Coalition on Roll-Call Voting in Brazil, 2003–2006

In Brazil’s legislative process, political exchanges between the government and legislature is an essential feature. This article focuses on the role of the president and political parties in Brazil’s national legislative process. Because nonideological factors influence voting, roll calls do not suffice for estimation of legislators’ policy preferences. In this article, we derive a spatial model of voting in which voting behavior is induced by both ideological motivations and coalition dynamics and develop a multilevel ideal-point model implied by the spatial voting model. After the proposed model is applied to the analysis of roll-call votes in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 2003 and 2006, coalition dynamics is found to influence the voting behavior of legislators. We also confirm the finding in previous studies that the ideological alignment of political parties in the legislature contrasts with the perceived positions.

A complex network approach to political analysis: Application to the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

In this paper, we introduce a network-based methodology to study how political entities evolve over time. We constructed networks of voting data from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, where deputies are nodes and edges are represented by voting similarity among deputies. The Brazilian Chamber of deputies is characterized by a multi-party political system. Thus, we would expect a broad spectrum of ideas to be represented. Our results, however, revealed that plurality of ideas is not present at all: the effective number of communities representing ideas based on agreement/disagreement in propositions is about 3 over the entire studied time span. The obtained results also revealed different patterns of coalitions between distinct parties. Finally, we also found signs of early party isolation before presidential impeachment proceedings effectively started. We believe that the proposed framework could be used to complement the study of political dynamics and even applied in similar social networks where individuals are organized in a complex manner.

Sound and Politics: The Audio Archive of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

The Câmara dos Deputados, the lower house of Brazil’s National Congress, is a leader in the digitization and online dissemination of audiovisual recordings of legislative sessions. Its website hosts the Arquivo Sonoro, an initiative of the Câmara’s audiovisual department, which contains over 120,000 hours of recordings of speeches, votes, and committee meetings spanning over half a century. The Câmara also makes available online complete video of sessions dating back three years. This research note explores the methodological, historical, and pedagogical opportunities that these audiovisual sources offer scholars and educators. It employs as examples the research of a faculty member, a doctoral candidate, and three undergraduate students, all of whom are among the contributors to a digital humanities project that showcases this remarkable resource. By highlighting ambient noise, volume, emotion, body language, grammatical errors, regional or ethnic accents, and discrepancies with the written record, the authors demonstrate some of the ways that aurality and visuality can enrich and complicate humanities and social science research. They also reveal the multifaceted benefits of institutional support for the digitization of archival material and its free dissemination online to scholars and the public.

Entre a judicialização e o descrédito: a necessária reforma do regimento interno da Câmara dos Deputados

A discussão acerca da crise institucional brasileira passa, essencialmente, pela carência de legitimidade e de efetividade do Poder Legislativo, cujo processo decisório, além de burocrático, não alcança sua finalidade última – a criação de políticas públicas – e nem é socialmente respaldado. Assim, no âmbito da Câmara dos Deputados, é fundamental a discussão acerca da necessidade de reforma de seu Regimento Interno, cujas atualizações pontuais são incapazes de, hodiernamente, recuperar a coesão normativa, afastando os defeitos de técnica legislativa e superando as inúmeras dificuldades vislumbradas pela práxis parlamentar.

The discourse and coordination among advocacy coalitions: the case of Belo Monte

Purpose This study aims to analyze the use of discourse to solve issues related to coordination between advocacy coalitions in processes of gradual and transformative institutional change related to public policies. Design/methodology/approach Theoretical background is based on the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), new discursive institutionalism and critical discourse analysis theories. The research examines shorthand notes of public hearings held in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate between 1999 and 2012, carrying out a case study on Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant. The speech extracts were categorized according to the modes of operation of ideology and typical strategies of symbolic construction proposed by Thompson (1995). Findings The results suggest that the discourse can be an instrument of internal coordination and between coalitions that share beliefs about a policy, as in the case of Belo Monte. Potentially existing coalitions define their identities and set positions on controversial issues, aligning interests and expectations. In the case studied, the modes of operation of ideology verified as instruments of the coalitions were dissimulation, reification, fragmentation, unification and legitimation. Research limitations/implications The paper represents a unique analysis of the modes of operation of ideology (Thompson, 1999) in the case of Belo Monte. In addition, the paper aims to contribute to the New Discursive Institutionalism and to the ACF when it uses the critical discourse analysis to articulate a method to analyze the use of the Discourse by the coalitions. In fact, such an approach integrating the ACF, the New Discursive Institutionalism and the critical discourse analysis is something original. Finally, it also addresses a gap in ACF: issues related to advocacy coalition coordination. Practical implications Attentive readers linked to organizations working on infrastructure and environmental policies can benefit from the results by envisaging the deliberate manipulation of typical symbolic construction strategies and general modes of operation of ideology. Social implications The study sheds light on the daily and behind-the-scenes disputes among stakeholders who are interested in a certain public policy. It may draw attention to the access and professional use of the shorthand notes of the hearings held at the National Congress. Originality/value This paper aims to fill a gap pointed out by Jenkins-Smith et al. (2014) regarding problems of coordination of advocacy coalitions. In addition, it innovates by using critical discourse analysis as a methodological reference in ACF empirical studies. In addition, this work continues a trajectory of two other previously published studies dealing with the same phenomenon: a theoretical essay and a case study.

Context Matters! Looking Beyond Platform Structure to Understand Citizen Deliberation on Brazil's Portal e‐Democracia

This article analyzes the participatory design of the Portal e‐Democracia, sponsored by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. More specifically, it examines how citizens took part in the online discussions about the Brazilian laws on the Budget Guidelines, the 2013 Annual Budgeting, and the Political Reform debates of 2013 and 2015. We hypothesize that discussion forums with identical structures can nevertheless host debates with very diverse characteristics. The methodological approach considers a quantitative content analysis, using descriptive statistics and correspondence analysis to examine how the forums’ features were related to their structure, in terms of user identification, openness and freedom of speech, agenda, and moderation. We also examine the quality of public debate in these arenas by considering the interactions with regard behaviors of justification, reciprocity, and respect. We find that, even though the space for debating was structurally the same, every forum had some particular characteristics concerning the discussions. This leads us to consider the issue at stake and the sociopolitical context as variables that are more important for characterizing the debate than structure per se.

How Does the Law Put a Historical Analogy to Work?: Defining the Imposition of A Condition Analogous to That of a Slavee in Modern Brazil

Over two decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as the imposition of “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity with an interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors have obtained hundreds of consent agreements and convictions in the labor courts. This article – co-authored by a legal historian, a staff attorney at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, and a federal judge – draws on a massive archive of work site inspection reports to explore the ways in which inspectors and prosecutors give specific meaning to the analogy with chattel slavery. The authors find that the term “slave labor,” in this context, does not depend upon the international law definition of slavery as the exercise over a person of “any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership.” Instead, it identifies specific behaviors that are no longer permissible as between employer and worker, and which reproduce elements of what was once imposed by masters upon slaves. Intermediate normative terms introduced in the 2003 revision of the penal code – which prohibits the subjection of workers to “degrading conditions” and “debilitating work days” – have through the inspection processes taken on specific meaning. Rather than representing subjective notions in potential conflict with the principal of legality, as critics argue, their interpretation has unfolded through careful processes of documentation, negotiation, and prosecution. In Brazil’s current situation of political polarization and institutional fracture, this remarkable campaign against slave labor is coming under fierce attack from large-scale landholders and from elements within the executive, a development which adds urgency to the task of explicating the campaign’s legal bases and operational practices.

Why Legislative Networks? Analyzing Legislative Network Formation

Are the social networks of legislators affected more by their political parties or their personal traits? How does the party organization influence the tendency of members to work collectively on a day-to-day basis? In this paper, I explore the determinants of the relationships of legislators in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. I use exponential random graph models to evaluate the relative influence of personal traits versus party influence in generating legislator relationships. Despite a focus on personalism in Brazil, the analysis reveals that the effects of political parties on tie formation are roughly equal to the effects of personal traits, suggesting that networks may make political parties much more cohesive than contemporary literature would lead us to believe.

Politics on the Web: Using Twitter to Estimate the Ideological Positions of Brazilian Representatives

The use of social media has become increasingly widespread among citizens and politicians in Brazil. This means of communication served as a key arena for debate and propaganda during the 2014 legislative and presidential elections, when a very polarized political scenario emerged. New approaches have been developed that use information from the social network structure constructed by political actors on social media platforms, such as Twitter, in order to calculate ideal points. Can data from the decision to 'follow' a profile on Twitter be used to estimate politicians' ideological positions? Can approaches like this show the variance of political positions even within a very fragmented legislative body, such as the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies? This article presents and analyzes the successful application of a Bayesian spatial model developed by Barbera (2015), using data from Brazil. This method allowed to capture differences between parties and political actors similar to those found by means of roll call votes. It also makes possible to calculate ideal points for actors who participate in the public debate, but are not professional politicians.

Do Birds of a Feather Vote Together, or Is It Peer Influence?

Why and when do legislators vote together on policy? Do legislators decide to vote similarly mainly because of social influence or similarity? I contribute to the literature by offering a social network theory of voting. It is argued that close social ties help to establish reputations and to aid the flow of information among peer legislators, leading to increased influence and increased rates of co-voting among them. I examine the relative effects of information exchange networks and social exchange networks on rates of co-voting, controlling for similarities among legislators. The data include legislative votes from 2010 to 2014 in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. The results suggest that social influence stemming from social relationships exert substantial effects on rates of congressional co-voting.

The Representation of East Asia in Latin American Legislatures

What is the representation of East Asia in Latin American legislatures? Existing studies have focused on individual politicians of East Asian descent such as Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru, but no systematic research has been done on the political representation of East Asia in Latin America. In order to fill this gap, this study analyzes the descriptive and substantive aspects of East Asian representation in Latin America. For the descriptive dimension, this article reviews the composition of legislators of East Asian descent in each Latin American country and finds that people of Japanese descent are “overrepresented” in the Peruvian and Argentine lower houses, while people of Korean and Chinese descent are underrepresented. Using the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies as an example, this study also reveals that deputies of East Asian descent differ from other deputies in terms of their political careers. As for the substantive dimension, this study focuses on Brazilian deputies’ responses to the Twin Ocean Railroad project, one of the largest Chinese infrastructure projects in Latin America. The statistical test performed in this study shows that the deputies tend to be members of the Brazil–Peru–China Pro-Twin Ocean Railroad Caucus if they are affiliated with the Brazil–Japan Caucus, if they are from a wealthier state, or if their performance in the last election was good. In addition, they are not likely to be members of the caucus if they are affiliated with the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), an important opposition party.

Formal Comparisons of Legislative Institutions: Ideal Points from Brazilian Legislatures

As the popularity of formal analyses of legislative activity in Latin America grows, so does the importance of understanding the limits of the estimates produced by such analyses and the methodological adaptations necessary when using these measures to make formal comparisons. This research note details the considerations involved and demonstrates their significance with an empirical example using the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. This empirical analysis leads to conclusions that are the opposite of those in the literature, suggesting that such formal comparisons across institutions need to be made with care.

The institutionalisation of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the institutional development of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (BCD) from 1826 to the present. Legislature careers, the internal organisation of the BCD, the current system for filling positions within the committees and electoral rules are the objects of this study. The process of development of the BCD should be understood in light of the dynamics of the Brazilian political system, which has undergone significant ruptures of regime, and also in light of the nearly permanent fragility of the democracy, especially of its representative components. It is an institution with legislature career patterns that vary through time, but always point towards opportunities out of the BCD, a stable, hierarchical and complex mode of organisation that currently values parties as distributors of opportunities. It is, above all, an institution that is subject to external influences from other parts of the political system, which diminish its autonomy and self-determination, as shown by the example of the rule for the adjudication of terms. With its 190 years, the BCD has evolved along with Brazilian democracy and today, although boasting a great structure and large resources, it still needs to establish itself as a decisive and permanent actor in driving public policies and communication (parties and government projects) with voters.

Open parliament policy applied to the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACTThis article will analyse the implementation of an open parliament policy that is taking place at the Chamber of Deputies, in accordance with the guidelines of the Open Government Partnership international programme (OGP), regarding the action plan of the Opening Parliament Work Group in particular, one of the subgroups of OGP. The authors will evaluate two blocks of initiatives for open parliaments executed by the Chamber in the last few years, that is, digital participation in the legislative process and Transparency 2.0, in order to observe their impasses and results obtained until now. In the first part the authors will study the e-Democracy portal and in the second part the authors will focus on open data, collaborative activities to use those data (hackathons) and the creation of the Hacker Lab, a permanent space dedicated to open parliament practices. The analysis considers the initiatives that the authors evaluated as part of the transformative and arena profiles of the Brazilian Parliament, according to Polsby's classification, with exclusive characteristics.

The Political Cost of Corruption: Scandals, Campaign Finance, and Reelection in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

While corruption is widely disapproved of, some corrupt politicians continue to win elections. We tackle this paradox by examining the effects of malfeasance scandals in politicians’ behavior. In particular, we focus on their campaign finance strategies and career choices. We explore these issues empirically with an original dataset that includes all lower-house members of Congress (MCs) in Brazil from 1995 to 2010. Although tainted incumbents tend to be penalized electorally, we show that campaign spending attenuates this effect. These results are robust, controlling for a host of potential confounders and biases. Hence, we offer a first exploration of incumbents’ strategies to avoid the electoral cost of their publicized wrongdoings. Above a certain threshold of funding, Brazilian members of Congress become impervious to negative exposure, regardless of the severity of their ethical and/or criminal violations. These results carry important normative consequences in terms of regulating campaign financing as a means of improving accountability.