Enlarging the Playing Field : Political Circulation of Brazilian Senators in the First Republic *

The article analyzes the career patterns of Brazilian senators during the First Republic. It explores whether there is any relationship between the establishment of a structure of political opportunities and the recruitment patterns of this segment of the parliamentary elite. The aim is to assess the circulation among the political positions attained before reaching the position of Senator. The research consists of the systematic observation of the biographies of the 851 holders of senatorial mandates from the 21st legislature (1890/1891) to the 37th senatorial term (1934/1937). Results suggest that the political careers of senators extended in time and have become more diverse in terms of the political instances they encompassed. The new institutional framework, with more positions facing electoral competition and the strengthening of state-level policy, has intensified political circulation among government levels (municipal, state and federal) and the decision-making arenas (executive and legislative). These results show that the legislative recruitment patterns identified in the literature devoted to the second half of the 20th century were already outlined by the senatorial political elite of the First Republic.

his article deals with the relationship between the structure of political opportunities and the career patterns of Brazilian senators elected during the First Republic . The career of the representatives was understood, by the body of work studying legislative recruitment in Brazil, as a privileged resource for understanding political circulation within the public offices and therefore, indirectly, for identifying the relationship among the institutional environment, political opportunities and individual strategies.
Comparative studies on political careers in federal systems indicate that the patterns of political careers in Brazil are much more heterogeneous and open than those found in the USA and Germany (BORCHERT, 2009). According to this author, Brazil offers a large field for the game of political ambitions, increasing the frequency of movements between the arenas (executive and legislative) and levels of government (municipal, state and federal).
From this proposition, we analyze how the number and types of positions available to anyone who aspires to a political position in Brazil change the profile of the parliamentary elite. In a word, we aim to investigate the extent to which the change in the structure of political opportunities (due to the introduction of the election for governors, mayors and senators) has modified the path taken by Brazilian senators.
The most appropriate historical period for such investigation is at the establishment of the republican regime: the new conditions for obtaining an electoral mandate from the first Republic led us to study the political career of Brazilian senators elected between 1890 and 1934. Therefore, we argue that the institutional arrangement established in the First Republic, to enhance electoral activity at the sub-national level, diversified and strengthened the political careers of the members of the Upper House. More specifically, we intend to empirically measure how the implementation of a federal political structure and an environment favorable to political circulation are reflected in the length of the careers of the senators and their circulation in the several political posts they occupied before reaching the Senate.
With the proclamation of the Republic, candidates for mayors, representatives in the lower chamber, governors, senators, President and Vice-T president of the Republic were elected by direct vote 1 . The parliamentary legislatures had mandates of three years in the House and nine in the Senate (with one third renewed every three years). Add to that the posts of state representatives and senators, which existed in some States, and we have a system with intense electoral activity at the bases (TELAROLLI, 1982, p. 64).
Under the monarchy, senators were appointed by the Emperor from a triple list drawn up by the provinces. There were no regular elections because the post was for life: the Senator composed a privileged mechanism through which the Emperor rewarded or co-opted regional political allies as a channel of access to the top of the political structure. According to Cerqueira Leite (1978), ... the office of senator represented the culmination of a brilliant career […] It was necessary that the future senator had already conquered important steps in the art of politics, had hands-on learning and the school could only be, then, the holding of some positions such as representative, president of the province, minister, diplomat and state adviser (CERQUEIRA LEITE, 1978, p. 44).
So, the Senate was closer to the Union than to the province and its connection was under the auspices of the Crown.
This characteristic of the senatorial mandate was quite consistent with a centralized political structure like the imperial regime. According to José Murilo de Carvalho(2003), the Brazilian imperial bureaucracy was shaped like an inverted pyramid, in which the number of positions and salaries was highly concentrated at the top of the system, in contrast to the American structure with a strong focus at the local level. So, "the consequence of this centralized structure was the 1 Elective positions during the Brazilian Empire were Senator, General Deputy, Members of Provincial Assemblies, Municipal Judge and Alderman. Municipal Judge and Alderman were elected by direct vote in the city. For the other positions (Senators and general deputies or members of the Provincial Assemblies), the elections were indirect (or in two degrees). The first Brazilian electoral standard, Law Nº. 387, 19 August, 1846, "would call as voters only those who voted in the elections for representatives, senators (to create the three-name lists submitted to the emperor) and members of the provincial assemblies" (CAVALCANTI et al., 1975, p.65). This standard follows what is prescribed in Chapter VI of the constitution of 1824, according to which the "voters" were designated by their "votings", they should be men, native Brazilians, not slaves, older than 25 years, not religious and with a net annual income greater than one hundred thousand réis. The indirect election was only abolished in the electoral reform of 1881 (according to Article 1 of Decree Nº 3029, 9 January 1881, also known as the Saraiva Law). The conditions for elegibility were the same (except for the census criteria, which were more restrictive). accumulation of officials and administrative activities at the central level of the government, its reduced presence at the provincial level and its near absence at the local level". (CARVALHO, 2003, p. 152) The adoption of a federal structure presented an essential change in the form of the exercise of political power. The decentralization of the political structure implemented by the constituents of 1891 stipulated standards that raised the sub-national political game to another level, in which the states would work as the counter-balance in national politics. One of the main factors that unified the architects of the new regime was precisely the role of state politics: ...it was on the issue of political autonomy that all the provinces, without exception, united to support the federalist project, because only in this respect could there be an 'equalization' of benefits to all units of the Federation. Political autonomy meant ending the control that the Central Government had over local elections and, above all, ensuring the electivity of former presidents of the province, who became state governors. (ABRUCIO, 1998, p.33).
If, by 1889, it was politically possible that the careers of senators were guided by an exclusively national logic (since the status of Senator was a prerogative of the Moderator Power), after that date the careers of these representatives would, necessarily, have to go through the "accounts" of the elites that were dominant in the states of the federation. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect a reconfiguration of the profile of the individual who reached the senate as of 1889. The new parameters established by the republican political structure turned senators elected during this period into a privileged object to be exploited in order to assess how a new institutional environment (federal and elective) changed the profile of the elected representatives. In other words, if the senator of the Empire was a sort of statesman, a typical man devoted to political functions, an individual with experience in the provincial presidencies, the House of Representatives, the 2 Even though Carvalho(2003) refers to the bureaucratic structure of the Brazilian Imperial State, it is also legitimate to extend this notion to the political structure of the Empire. Simon Schwartzman (2007) makes the same evaluation of the Imperial period from Francisco Iglésias' book: "The first element that stands out in this work is the hierarchical and centralized system of authority at the national level. The presidents of the provinces were appointed by the emperor and their loyalty and fidelity were totally oriented toward the central government." (SCHWARTZMAN, 2007, p. 176 perspectives that can be used to interpret the meaning of our empirical findings.

The application of the concept of political circulation in Brazil
The forerunner to the theme of circulation of the political elites in Brazil, José Murilo de Carvalho(2003), distinguishes two meanings of this notion: outward circulation and inward circulation. The first, typically paretian, refers to the renewal of the elites and the entry of new individuals within the leading groups 3 .
The second points to the possibility of exchanging different positions within the same group (CARVALHO, 2003, p. 128). In his work on imperial politics, one of the most important pieces of evidence to characterize the training of the political elite in this period is the ability with which the traditional agents of the national elite switched between different positions until they reached the Ministry or the State Council -a different trajectory, according to Carvalho (2003), than that of the 3 It is important to stress that, in this study, we do not use the term in this sense because we denote, with the term "circulation", the passing of the same individuals through different public positions instead of designating the substitution of the social types that compose the universe of the elites. We prefer to keep the word "circulation" as an alternative to the term "change" (which is very generic) and, at the same time, avoid a very specific expression like "turnover" or "exchange". senators because, according to him, the lifelong character of the Senate gave the holders less political circulation vis-à-vis the provincial representatives and presidents. In general, the Senate was relatively blocked against the symbiosis between the legislative and executive powers. According to Carvalho (2003), the Senators "would not let go of the Senate, which became for them a kind of Siberia" (CARVALHO, 2003, p. 128).
The issue of political circulation was recovered by researchers studying More recently, Santos and Pegurier (2011) have attempted to review the idea that career discontinuity is associated with the lack of significant political experience. According to this new assessment, which goes against Marenco dos Santos (2000), we can observe higher levels of prior experience if we consider that "the new members elected to the Chamber are experienced politicians at the local and state levels" (SANTOS and PEGURIER, 2011). Regarding Samuels (2003), they argue against the idea that the low retention in the House of Representatives is not the product of a weak institution, devoid of decision-making capacity and of low interest to professional politicians, but of an intense flow of career circulation that shows high competition for elective posts in the country. They argue that the ways out of the legislative branch do not mean a lack of well-defined political boundaries but, rather, that their definition occurs with the integration between the legislative and executive powers. Moreover, the office of federal representative should be The three articles mentioned above are very concerned with the measurement of political circulation in and out of the House of Representatives from 1946 onwards. However, according to Carvalho (2003), the occurrence of the phenomenon in the imperial period seems to indicate that it may have ocurred in the various regimes in our political history. Therefore, exploring the phenomenon in the "Old Republic" can add more evidence about its constitution during that period, which had not yet been discussed in studies about the topic.

What we know about the political elite during the First Republic
Some publications that have emerged over the past two years seem to Republic, and the basic problem is the meaning of the political competition within the election process.
One of the main conclusions of this study suffices to clarify the difference between this article and our proposal. According to the authors, ...the practice of fraud must be understood beyond the subject of the distortion of the truth. It is a fact that the literature devoted to the First Republic attempted to downgrade the form of competition in the Republican era. In this article, however, we show that the importance of the practices of distortion of the vote should be reconsidered, framing them according to competition standards in vogue at that time (RICCI and ZULINI, 2014, p. 466).
We try to align with this perspective when retrieving aspects obscured by conventional interpretations of parliamentary politics in the First Republic.
However, our work is in the field of political recruitment studies, on the political career of Brazilian senators with emphasis on political circulation. These clarifications should be enough to differentiate our research proposal from that of Ricci and Zullini (2014). Still, we should underline this distinction stressing that In general, the results show that, from the perspective of social background, the elites of the three states are extremely homogeneous. They were all reluctant to accept individuals from the working class; the three groups have much higher university education levels than the rate of literacy of their states; and, in the three groups, the Bachelors of Law were the majority (exceeding of 70%).
These constants, however, do not occur when the authors analyze the career patterns of the three elites. The first differentiating factor in the elite of the three states appears in diachronic analysis. The empirical findings revealed that, as the generations evolved, the Paulista elite turned out to be the most provincial, progressively increasing the recruitment within the state -the evidence is the percentages of individuals who were born outside the state: in São Paulo they were 22% in the first generation, and this value drops by half in the third. Compared to other states, Love (1982) asserts that ...only 17% had had jobs outside of São Paulo (whether in administrative or political positions or in the private sector). In Minas Gerais, however, the ratio was 22% and a surprising number of persons from Pernambuco was included in this scenario (44%), which can be explained by the fact that there are fewer job opportunities in that state. Furthermore, less than one third of Paulistas served in the federal congress, while more than half of the Mineiros and Pernambucanos did (LOVE, 1982, p. 223).
Another difference among the elites of the three states that calls a lot of attention is the percentage of individuals who held only one political public office throughout the period covered by the survey: they are 75% in Pernambuco, 58% in Minas Gerais and 54% in São Paulo. The analysis of careers reveals important differences regarding mobility between positions: 25% of Pernambucanos who had more than one post did not have a well-defined profile, whereas "similar data from Minas Gerais and São Paulo indicate that, in both places, if government secretaries did not next move on to the palace as presidents (governors) they went to the federal service. However, in Pernambuco, a state secretariat office was like an end in itself " (LEVINE, 1980 p. 173 São Paulo had the most bureaucratic system, in which the main route of access was, according to Love (1982), a career in the PRP. Usually, it assumed some years of service in towns of the interior as a condition for ascending to higher posts in the PRP hierarchy. Wirth (1982) clearly states the division of functions within the Mineiro universe, which will allow young graduates to be replaced by the second step to the same extent that it deepened the bond of the "super-bosses" with the small towns of the interior -characterizing the high isolation of the Mineiros. As an overview, we note that the access road to the elite universe in Pernambuco went through the university and connections to the most influential families of the capital -the two attributes were more important than belonging to the economic elite, since "in a predominantly agricultural and export-oriented society, the vast majority of political leaders came from the liberal professions, not from state interest groups" (LEVINE, 1980, p. 172).
These findings clarify important points about the political elite at the subnational level and in various political sectors, since the relationship of positions examined in the study by Love(1982), Wirth(1982) and Levine (1980) is wider,  (2003) and CERQUEIRA LEITE (1978)) and the period beginning with the Constituent of 1946 (subject of the works previously presented). Furthermore, the work of the regionalists has already suggested traces of political circulation during the First Republic. The question remains, therefore, as to how these trends behave having the population composed of senators elected at the national level during the first republican experiment as empirical object.
Strictly speaking, this group includes the mandate holders in the Second Republic  These are the first pieces of evidence that, since the end of the Imperial period, the changes in the senatorial career are clearly based on the passage of time. The increase in the average values of career time and the number of positions suggests that the political structure gradually shaped the career profile of senators.
Symptomatic of the strong leadership exercised by the very experienced elites during the third period (1912)(1913)(1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918) is the degree of uniformity in which the career time is manifested during this period, verified by the coefficient of variation of Table 01, which exhibited the lowest values during this period.
Considering the group of those elected in the period from 1890-1900 as those most similar to the imperial congressmen, we realize that the patterns displayed in two tables change significantly with respect to those elected from 1903. So, it seems to be correct to say that the senators elected during the initial decade of the Republic were remnants of the imperial period: their entry period into political activity occurs mainly in the 1870s. A minimal portion of those elected between 1890 and 1900 began their career when the Republican period was already established. Therefore, we take the elite of the 1890s as a sort of "elite of transition" whose characteristics illustrate the imperial regime more than the budding Republican period. Consequently, the changing profile of the political elite corresponded to the consolidation of the structure created in 1891, which can be better noticed from 1903.
These data on curricular length and quantity, although suggestive, still give a very general perception of the career of the senators.
The trajectory of a senator after the Proclamation of the Republic will differ greatly from that described by Beatriz Cerqueira Leite (1978)  Table 03 reveals a very well delineated profile of the senators elected during the 1890-1900 period (taken the remnants of the Empire as a proxy). Those who had positions in only one level of Government and held fewer than five positions (short and homogeneous careers) had a huge advantage (+6.9) over those who held six or more positions. This is confirmed by the negative residuals in the group with long careers, whether they were homogenous (-2.8) or heterogeneous (-4.8). 7 The criterion for designating up to 05 offices in the short/long dummy is that this is the median shown in Table 02 for the total of offices in the entire period. The offices may be elective or non-elective at the municipal, state or federal levels. The relationship of possible non-elective offices is as follows: non-elective office at the municipal level (municipal secretaries, hospital directors, etc.), non-elective office at the state level (1sttier positions: state secretaries), non-elective office at the state level (2nd-tier positions: bank and institution presidents, police chiefs), non-elective office at the federal level (1sttier : ministers) and non-elective office at the federal level (2nd-tier: secretary, advisor, etc). The relationship of elective offices also separates the careers of the three levels: alderman, mayor, state representative, governor (and vice-governor), federal deputy, senator, president (and vice-president). 8 According to which, values greater than 1.96 (positive) indicate a trend toward concentration of cases, inversely, negative values greater than 1.96 indicate the low occurrence of cases.  (1903)(1904)(1905)(1906)(1907)(1908)(1909), the position and the sign of the significant residuals are reversed, because the tendency towards the concentration of cases is now in the cell of those who held long and homogeneous careers (2.8). This is to the detriment of the 32 cases classified as having short and homogeneous careers, which presented a negative residual of 3.3 in this the second period. The trend of the low occurrence of cases in the "short and homogeneous" category remains consistent until the end of the regime (-2.9 in 1912/1918 and -3.9 in 1921/1930); and only among those elected to the legislature, post-1930, were significant residuals found in the "short and heterogeneous" category, which leads us to believe that the replacement of the Since there were few individuals (the population is 358 men), we can assume that they moved among the same positions. To measure the levels of government of these careers, Table04 adds the itineraries according to the passage through one, two or three levels of government and relates them to the set of the five periods studied 9 .
Upon examining the percentages in the column of those who had state and federal experience, it is evident that circulation between governmental levels is not present at the start of the First Republic. Rather, this is a trend that intensifies over time. In this sense, the description of José Murilo de Carvalho (2003), according to whom the the careers of the Imperial Senators "was limited to the general election for representative and, from there, to the Senate, which they did not leave" (CARVALHO, 2003, p.127), agrees with the traits observed for the senators elected in the first period analyzed here. In other words, the journey to state offices was not a characteristic of the senators elected immediately after the Proclamation, but it would become so for those elected in the 20th century. The standarized residuals indicate that there is a positive association (+2.9) between exclusively federal experience and having been elected in the 1890/1900 period, whereas this association is negative for those having experience in the three governmental levels (-3.2). It is noted that the outlines of the careers change substantially at the end of the First Republic (1921Republic ( /1930: the senators who passed through the lower levels grew to the point of those who had passed through the three levels, such that they obtained a positive association with that period (+4.6). This provides sufficient information to prove that, in addition to the longer time, the more diversified the number of positions, the paths they took began to rely on the state and municipal levels during the First Republic. The role of the state governments, in the distribution of political power in the subnational spheres, has been consolidated by the history of this period. Table   04 presents important data, which is, 19.3 percent of the cases had exclusively federal experience 10 . These data may be interpreted in two ways. First, they may show that nearly 1 /5 of the senators did not have their careers guided by the governor's plans. This shows a relative independence of the senatorial segment of the parliamentary elite, mitigating the perspective that the careers were guided exclusively by state policy.
On the other hand, the higher percentage is shown in the second column "earlier studies of political recruitment in Norway have indicated that the professionalization process developed unevenly across geographical and political regions". (ELIASSEN, 1974, apud ELIASSEN andPEDERSEN, 1978, p. 316).
It In addition to the time of the previous career, it is possible to examine the circulation patterns in the lower levels of the federation in the same states previously chosen, as shown in Graph 02. The information represented by lines refers to the percentage of senators who did not have only a federal career; that is, those who acted in two spheres (federal/municipal or federal/state) or in three levels (federal, state and municipal) of government.
In general, the regional center becomes a constituent element of careers

Main conclusions
This article presents three fundamental empirical findings, from which we can draw some conclusions. The diversity of career moves at the individual level can also be perceived as follows: isolating the careers of senators who held at least six positions before taking office, we realized that only in 23 situations the holder went from the local, state or federal sphere directly to the senate. This means that 89.15% of them held many intermediate positions in the three spheres of government before reaching the Senate. The lack of a cursus honorum, i.e., a uniform path, common to most careers to the Senate seems to indicate that, at the federal level, the available playing field allowed numerous strategies for the establishment of a political career.
The second finding that our study revealed is the lack of a univocal sense for the circulation of the senatorial elite. This finding allows us to resume the divergence between Santos and Pegurier(2011) and Marenco dos Santos (2000).
We can agree to the position of the first ones when they emphasize the importance of the political experience in sub-national levels; but also, this finding can match the second when we observe that "a federal system offers greater diversity of routes for a political career, with the availability of public positions on multiple institutional levels." (MARENCO DOS SANTOS, 2000, p. 230) The third and final empirical finding that must be emphasized is that the two features identified in the senatorial elite (longer and more diversified careers) are not evenly distributed among the sub-national units. Our data suggest that the individuals are elected to a term in the Senate. This means that, with the end of life tenure, it is necessary to run for reelection regularly, and that is a novelty of the republican political form that singularizes the empirical object of this article with respect to the former imperial senators. The significant change in values between those elected in the period of 1890-1900 and the other periods is an empirical finding that seems to reinforce this conclusion.
If the assessment of these findings is correct, this article signals the importance of devoting efforts to the study of the elite in the First Republic, because it seems that the parliamentary career of the "Old Republic" contains clues to unravel the source of recruitment patterns being diagnosed after 1946.