Brazil

Abstract

In this chapter, we present the politics of congressional speech in Brazil as the result of incentives produced by this country’s political model, the so-called coalitional presidentialism. On the one hand, a majority formed by larger parties controls the decision-making process related to the Brazilian public agenda, turning the core policy debate into a partisan and ideological issue. On the other, “autonomous” spaces for delivering speeches are both claimed and occupied by legislators with more specific identities, such as women and deputies with longer-lived congressional trajectories. These personal traits cannot be limited to the traditional cleavages of the political system. For this, we analyzed more than 190,000 speeches delivered in the following phases of the floor sessions held between 2001 and 2018.