Preprint
Seizing the Agenda: Polarization and Legislative Autonomy in Brazilian Presidentialism
Jamil Civitarese; Fabiano Santos
Resumo
Brazilian coalitional presidentialism has long been read as a system in which the executive sets the agenda and the legislature holds a veto. We argue that, since the mid-2010s, the Congress has been building agenda-setting power. We account for the shift with a formal spatial framework in which a legislature weighs the cost of acquiring agenda power against the costs caused by the executive it expects to face. Two forces drive the investment: the rightward movement of a median legislator dissatisfied with the status quo and the recent polarization of the Executive, a partner that became too radical and costly to legislate with. Reading the record from Lula's first governments through Lula III, we show how the realignment of agenda power came to constrain the president who now has to both manage the coalition and to accommodate increasing policy demands from the legislature.
Como citar
CIVITARESE, Jamil; SANTOS, Fabiano. Seizing the Agenda: Polarization and Legislative Autonomy in Brazilian Presidentialism. [S. l.]: Center for Open Science, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/3qgkx_v1.
ABNTABNT NBR 6023:2025 (3. ed.)
CIVITARESE, Jamil; SANTOS, Fabiano. Seizing the Agenda: Polarization and Legislative Autonomy in Brazilian Presidentialism. [S. l.]: Center for Open Science, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/3qgkx_v1.APA 7
Civitarese, J., & Santos, F. (2026). Seizing the Agenda: Polarization and Legislative Autonomy in Brazilian Presidentialism. . https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/3qgkx_v1BibTeX
@misc{civitarese20260457,
title = {Seizing the Agenda: Polarization and Legislative Autonomy in Brazilian Presidentialism},
author = {Jamil Civitarese and Fabiano Santos},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Center for Open Science},
doi = {10.31235/osf.io/3qgkx_v1},
language = {en},
url = {https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/3qgkx_v1}
}