Party filiation and appointment for positions in the Brazilian federal bureaucracy (1999-2018)

Abstract

How many are the top and middle-level Brazilian federal bureaucracy appointees, and to which party are they affiliated? Are there differences among presidential mandates regarding the number of these professionals and their party affiliation? This study seeks to answer these questions, by building a new database that gathers the number of party-affiliated public officials that were appointed to Cargos de Direção e Assessoramento Superior (DAS) (position of director and high level consultant). Descriptive analysis found that the proportion of party-affiliated among appointees increased during the Workers’ Party (PT) governments and higher among appointed professionals that were not civil servant. The power-sharing among parties - mainly between the party of the president and the others - varies significantly according to the government. The partisan control over appointees is milder in middle-level and stronger at top-level positions. However, a minority of appointees are party members, even among the top-level bureaucracy. Therefore, we suggest that the political networks go beyond the party affiliations. To understand these networks it is necessary to reassess the role of party politics in shaping the executive agenda and enable reinterpretation of how presidents build and manage the government coalition and the support to their agenda in the legislative arena.

Keywords:
political appointments - Brazil; patronage; political bureaucracy; multiparty presidentialism - Brazil