O sistema de comissões permanentes da Câmara dos Deputados: análise de sua composição e atuação na 54ª Legislatura

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the composition and performance of the standing committees system of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies in the 54th Legislature and show that these collegiate have different behaviors that can be explained by the main neo-institutional theories, especially the distributive and the partisan theories. The central hypothesis is that the differences in behavior of the committees are determined by the nature of their jurisdictions, and for this purpose adapts and extends the Gustavo Müller committees classification (2005) to evaluate the following derived hypotheses: a) the behavior of the Committees for Economic and Administrative Affairs, the Foreign Policy Committee and the Committees of Constitution and Justice and Citizenship is closer to the party model; b) the behavior of the Regional Focus Committees and the Social Order Committees is closer to the distributive model. In order to test the hypotheses, eight indicators are used to analyze each standing committee and help to discern the differences in the way they act in relation to neo-institutional theories: 1) Projects approved by the Executive; 2) Cleavage between government and opposition; 3) Government´s bill rapporteur; 4) Public hearings and other discussion meetings; 5) Disproportionality of the counterparts of the Federation Units; 6) Disproportionality of parties; 7) Formal expertise and professional experience; and 8) Seniority. It uses, as a data source, the Legislative Information System, data from the General Secretariat of the Bureau and information available on the House's website. In the end, it obtains results that prove the general and derived hypothesis, allowing to contribute to the debate and to a better knowledge of the behavior of the standing committees system of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.