No topo da cúpula: estrutura de poder, carreiras e a elite parlamentar da Câmara dos Deputados.

Abstract

This dissertation is the first work in the field of Political Science to gather in a single study the analysis of the three vertexes that form the power structure of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, while also studying the select group of legislators who hold or held some of these offices, a group commonly known as the elite or the high clergy in the Parliament. These vertexes, here called power roles, encompass the seven titular offices of the Presiding Board, a group whose most known character is the president of the Chamber; the party and the institutional leaderships, the latter corresponding to the functions of leaders of Government, Minority, Majority and Opposition; and the Chairs of the standing commissions. These positions will be analyzed in a specific chapter covering the internal structure of the institution. While another chapter reviews the literature on legislative studies from which the most important hypotheses analyzed in the dissertation arise: if data about sociocultural attributes or traits on the construction of the of the political career could help in the understanding of the criteria by which these positions are filled and, if so, which traits or attributes those would be; and if, based on the differentiations established by Strøm (1997) and Cox (2006), different functions may require different profiles and may therefore get fulfilled based on different criteria. Finally, the third chapter points to the methodology used in this dissertation, followed by a fourth chapter with a brief analysis of the database built for the study based on current deputies (members of the 55th legislative term), and the fifth and last chapter which analyzes the data in search of patterns and estimates to try to confirm or reject the dissertation hypotheses.