Presidential decree-making in Brazil for divergent policy goals

In this paper, we analyse presidential decree-making in Brazil by examining both legislative and administrative unilateral decisions made by the President. The constitutional delegation of broad powers to the President grants him significant discretion in law and policy-making processes. This includes legislative initiative, veto power, and the provision for urgency, which give the President significant control over the legislative agenda and motivate parties to participate in presidentially-led coalitions. Additionally, administrative powers enable the President to implement laws, distribute budgets, re-design executive portfolios, and politicize ministerial positions. Scholarly literature views agenda powers as coalition goods and administrative powers as a way for the President to appease undercompensated parties and monitor overcompensated parties. However, little is known about the different policy goals pursued by the President when choosing which type of decree to issue. Our hypothesis is that a costly ruling coalition serves as an incentive for the President to "presidentialize" the governing agenda through the use of administrative decrees that don't require approval from Congress. We use structural topic models (STM) to analyse the topics of legislative and administrative decrees issued by seven Brazilian Presidents from 1990 to 2022, utilizing document metadata such as presidential mandate, type of decree, size of legislative opposition, and coalition costs. Our findings support our hypothesis, providing evidence that presidents facing hostile congresses and leading costly coalitions have incentives to "presidentialize" their agenda through unilateral administrative decisions.