Author: Manoel Leonardo Santo

Abstract:

For at least twenty years, legislative studies in Brazil have produced robust explanations of the role of the legislature in the Brazilian political system. However, despite the accumulated knowledge on the subject, one aspect has been systematically ignored: the role of interest groups in the legislature.

With few exceptions (Mancuso, 2007a; Mancuso, 2007b; Diniz and Boschi, 2004; Santos, 2011), almost nothing is known about which groups are active, what strategies they use, how influential they are in the decision-making process, what the most relevant divisions are in the context of the dispute, among other equally important issues.

This article seeks to contribute to the debate by presenting a description of the interest groups that operate in the Chamber of Deputies, based on a historical series covering the period from 1983 to 2012. The study is motivated by two propositions already discussed in the literature. The first concerns the recovery of the legislature as a relevant arena in the decision-making process since the 1988 Constitution (Diniz and Boschi, 2004). The second refers to recent transformations in civil society and the system of interest representation in Brazil, which, according to experts, is migrating from a corporatist model to a hybrid system. This system combines centralized institutions of corporatist interest representation (such as the union structure) with an increasingly marked representative pluralism (Mancuso, 2007a; Diniz and Boschi, 2004).

Based on data from the registration of interest groups and parliamentary advisors in the Chamber of Deputies, the article presents evidence in favor of both propositions. In addition, it includes a discussion of the implications of these transformations for the Brazilian political system and the challenges related to the regulation of lobbying, which is one of the main problems to be addressed.

Source: https://repositorio.ipea.gov.br/handle/11058/3140