Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil.

By David Samuels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 264p. $65.00.

The recent and growing literature on Brazilian politics and institutions is divided into two main perspectives: A first perspective emphasizes politicians' parochial concerns, and the fact that legislators are always seeking to bring pork benefits to their bailiwicks, turning the president into a kind of prisoner of subnational interests. Furthermore, according to this viewpoint, party discipline is low and legislative behavior unpredictable. The second perspective defends the opposite—that is, party behavior is disciplined, Chamber of Deputies' decisions are predictable, and their members are unable to exercise their particularistic profligacy. David Samuels's book is a major contribution to this debate, explicitly in support of the first tradition, sustained by rich and well-organized empirical research, which combines statistical data, interviews, and case studies.

Although this work follows a conventional view about Brazilian politics, its argument is original. Unlike scholars who based their models on the reelection assumption, Samuels questions the relation between governability problems and the drive for reelection in Brazil. Instead, his lens is turned to the way federal institutions shape politicians' ambitions as well as legislative behavior. More specifically, he argues that Brazilian political problems derive from a combination of progressive ambition and the way federalism impacts on national politics. To demonstrate this proposition, the book is divided into three sections, each dedicated to showing through different angles the correctness of its central claim.

In the first section, Samuels offers an important contribution to the study of political careers and its impact on legislative politics. In this sense, he is certainly one of the pioneers in the use of ambition theory as a tool for understanding the political opportunity structure in Brazilian politics, which is not a trivial achievement. Two findings are relevant in this regard: 1) Brazilian politicians do not seek to build a career in the Chamber of Deputies; they view a congressional seat as a potential means for achieving a more powerful office, specially at the executive level in state or municipal administration; 2) the absence of careerism inside the legislative body prevents the development of a hierarchy of positions and universalistic norms allowing access to those positions in the Chamber. In particular, the seniority principle as a rule for internal ascent is only valid for the positions of speaker of the House and party whips, but does not apply to committee chairs, thus rendering the standing committees unappealing as an instrument of legislators' retention. Samuels, at this point, raises one of the fundamental paradoxes regarding the empowerment of legislative bodies in recent democracies: The Legislature cannot achieve institutionalization because the career incentives for deputies and senators point to the executive branch as the primary locus for intervening in relevant public decisions, and at the same time, the career profile does not change to help retain politicians in the Legislature because the latter is not sufficiently institutionalized (a process that would require exclusive career investments).

A second major contribution relates to the effects of national and subnational elections for executive offices upon national congressional races—the so-called coattail effects. This issue is dealt with in the second section of the book. Samuels, supported by statistical data as well as evidence from interviews, newspapers, and alliance patterns, demonstrates not only that congressional candidates coordinate their efforts around the gubernatorial dispute and not the presidential race, but also that gubernatorial coattails affect the outcome of the congressional elections. This, in turn, serves to explain why governors have influence over congressional deputies and, therefore, how federalism indeed impacts national executive–legislative relations in Brazil. To my knowledge, this is the first thorough scholarly work on coattail effects in Brazilian politics, and it can be said that it is done with academic rigor and elegance.

The third section deals with intergovernmental relations and shows how federalism interacts with progressive ambition, affecting policy performance, political accountability, and democratic governance. Three findings are relevant at this point: 1) Pork barreling exists but is not efficient in securing incumbency for congressional deputies; 2) pork barreling is efficient in the sense of allowing deputies to pursue their progressive ambition strategy; 3) Brazilian federal institutions have been designed to forward legislators' two interrelated goals: to provide resources to their supporters and to serve their own political ambitions. Once again, Samuels shows a meticulous way of working with the evidence, as well as a remarkable analytical capacity.

In spite of the abovementioned achievements of Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil, I would like to add some critical remarks. From a general point of view, the time element is missing. The critical perspective on Brazilian political parties, very common in U.S. academic circles and followed by Samuels, does not consider the simple fact that the current party system is relatively young. Any conclusion about the negative effects of Brazilian democratic institutions upon the national party system requires a much longer time span than the one under scrutiny. Indeed, the very fact that the statistical data do not allow one to discard presidential coattail effects (see Table 5.5, p. 103) indicates that governors' influence on congressional politics might not be an obstacle to the institutionalization or nationalization of national parties. In sum, the reach of Samuels's findings is restricted to the relations among federal institutions, career strategies, and legislative behavior—being silent, however, about long-term tendencies of the Brazilian party system.

From a theoretical standpoint, the combination of two almost opposite traditions should be more clearly stated. As is well known, ambition theory derives from the rational choice paradigm, while institutionalization theory follows the structural-functionalist approach. I agree that those traditions are more compatible than we are prepared to acknowledge, and Samuels's findings can be taken as a demonstration of this fact. Unfortunately, it seems that the study of this analytical topic was not within Samuels's preoccupations, a fact, notwithstanding, that surely does not diminish the merits of the book as whole.