Brazilian Conditional Agenda-Setting Power: Presidential Veto through Legislative Agenda’s Appropriation

Abstract

With the recent disputes between the Executive and Legislative Powers regarding the presidential veto power, this authority has been the subject of increasingly frequent attention in Brazil, despite the relevant contributions from the experiences of the United States and other Latin American countries. In Brazil, interesting cases have been observed that indicate the use of vetoes as a way to reset the legislative process, in which the President prevents the approval of the proposal generated in the Legislative branch and presents their own version of the vetoed matter. This is an alternative strategy of the veto power, a variation of the phenomenon known as appropriation of the legislative agenda. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), to establish and verify associations between occurrences of the phenomenon through a configurational view of the attributes for each type of appropriation, this article employs different theoretical perspectives on the veto applied to the U.S. and Latin American cases. It links these perspectives to the observed variation in the use of the presidential veto in Brazil, seeking to analyze the observed cases in light of governability and the preferences expressed between members of Congress and the President. We conclude that, contrary to what the literature predicted, the Brazilian President also exercises a “conditional agenda-setting power”.