CPMF: rise and fall of a policy

• Grant number: 17/15480-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Behavior
• Principal Investigator: Simone Diniz
• Grantee: Eduardo Araujo Couto
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 16/14525-6 - Political Institutions, Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations and Government Capacity, AP.TEM

Abstract

Under the framework of the coalitional presidentialism (presidencialismo de coalizão), the literature that focuses on the analysis of the Brazilian political system has still the same interpretative keys: governability and decisional power distribution (Palermo 2000, 2016), but new variables have been brought to the debate. Under which conditions can the president and the coalition obtain success and cooperation with Congress? Or, through another perspective, when is the opposition able to defeat the government? This case study about, under president's Lula second term, the failure in renewing the Contribuição Provisória sobre Movimentações Financeiras (CPMF - Provisional Contribution on Financial Transactions), brings up the hypothesis that the institutional bases (Figueiredo and Limongi, 1999), consolidated all-around the Brazilian political science, are necessary but not enough to explain the behavior of the Brazilian political system. Through a series of analyses that involve the formation and managing of coalitions (Batista, 2013; Freitas, 2016); strategic actions on the negociations (Diniz, 2005); the context and the actors' agendas; and the substance of the policies (Light, 1999), we seek explanations for the defeat at hand. It's not our goal to stablish prognostics for eventual defeats, but only to test new frameworks on a explicit case of government defeat.