MACMILLAN Making Brazil Work: Checking the President in a Multiparty System (Studies of the Americas)

This book offers the first conceptually rigorous analysis of the political and institutional underpinnings of Brazil's recent rise. Using Brazil as a case study in multiparty presidentialism, the authors argue that Brazil's success stems from the combination of a constitutionally strong president and a robust system of checks and balances. Review 'Making Brazil Work pulls together all the threads of . . . protracted debate [about governance in Brazil] and produces new and important contributions that confirm the relevance of the Brazilian case as a laboratory for the advancement of comparative politics... It shows how the success of coalitional presidentialism is grounded on the strength and effectiveness of checks and balances. The authors make a straightforward theoretical point: Checks on presidential power need to be as strong as that power for coalitional presidentialism to produce stable and effective governments; otherwise, the tools with which presidents build and maintain their coalitions could be easily employed to undermine the democratic regime by concentrating power on the presidency.' Perspectives on Politics "During the first decade or so after Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, many observers were pessimistic about the country's political institutions. The party system was too fragmented, the legislators too individualistic, the presidency a loose cannon on the ship of state. Yet Brazil's multiparty presidentialism has delivered increasingly effective government. In this book, Melo and Pereira deliver the most comprehensive account to date of how that unexpected result came to pass. The authors' deep knowledge of Brazilian politics is on display on every page, as are keen insights about the varieties of institutional arrangements that can sustain democracy." - John Carey, John Wenthworth Professor in the Social Science, Department of Government, Darthmouth College, USA "Marcus André Melo and Carlos Pereira provide a blueprint for researching the sources of institutional stability in multiparty presidential regimes. With theoretical breath and empirical care, they debunk old prejudices in regard to the functioning of the Brazilian democracy and prove that multiparty presidential regimes can produce sound, stable, and predictable economic policy outcomes. As they conclusively prove, multiparty coalitions that difficult policy implementation can also be a source of policy stability and consensual change rather than a trigger of gridlock and executive discretion. A brilliant reassessment of the political institutions that have made of Brazil a democratic economic power." - Ernesto Calvo, Associate Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, USA "This book is of interest to more than just Brazilian scholars or Latin Americanists. Brazil is a country with 26 states plus one federal district that experienced a severe financial crisis in the late 1990s. In its broader consideration of how the country's political system functions, the authors explain how such a complicated set of interests and institutions can work together, and even work well. As the European Union struggles with how to deal with often-similar governance issues with 28 Member States after its own financial crisis, there are plenty of lessons this book provides from the Brazilian experience. The chapter on budgetary and auditing institutions, which provides a fantastic analysis of sub-national level agencies and offers a parallel to debates about fiscal councils in the European context, is particularly good." - Mark Hallerberg, Professor and Director of the Fiscal Governance Centre, Hertie School of Governance, Germany "In Making Brazil Work, Marcus André Melo and Carlos Pereira have produced a coherent and creative defense of Brazil's political institutions. They carefully demonstrate that Brazil's multiparty presidentialism is not inevitably prone to gridlock and corruption. On the one hand, t