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How Valuable Is a Presidential Cabinet? Measuring Ministries’ Political Attractiveness in Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

Arnaldo Mauerberg Junior Open the ORCID record for Arnaldo Mauerberg Junior [Opens in a new window]  and
Carlos Pereira Open the ORCID record for Carlos Pereira [Opens in a new window]
Arnaldo Mauerberg Junior*
Affiliation:
Arnaldo Mauerberg Junior is a professor of political science at the University of Brasília.
Carlos Pereira*
Affiliation:
Carlos Pereira is a professor of political science at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
*
arnaldo.mauerberg@unb.br
carlos.pereira@fgv.br
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Abstract

How valuable is a cabinet position? While the current literature does not ignore the reality that ministries differ from one another, it does not offer either theoretical or methodological procedures to assess such differences. This article introduces a refined measure of coalescence degree that considers several characteristics ministries may have, as well as politicians’ preferences about cabinet appointments. We estimate the effect of this alternative measure of coalescence on the president’s legislative success using large Brazilian datasets from 1995 to 2014 and an elite survey conducted with 62 Brazilian legislators. Controlling for other coalition management variables (coalition size and ideological heterogeneity), our refined coalescence metric turns out to be a more appropriate tool to assess the president’s performance in Congress.

Keywords

Multiparty presidential systemscabinet proportionalityBrazilcabinet ministries
Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 25 - 45
Copyright
© University of Miami 2020 

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