Patronage and Presidential Coalition Formation

Effective democratic governance rests on the executive’s ability to forge coalitions that can advance policy and sustain the government against challengers. Scholars have long focused on cabinet appointments to understand how executives build coalitions with their legislative allies. In many democracies, however, cabinet appointments at the ministerial level may only represent the tip of the iceberg. We show that administrative political appointees (APAs) beneath the ministerial level constitute one of the most important ways that cooperation between legislative and executive is forged. Leveraging a unique and comprehensive database of an average 2600 Brazilian APAs per year over two decades, we evaluate their effect on coalition unity in critical legislative votes. We demonstrate that these APAs, which we collectively term the “patronage coalition,” have a significant effect on legislative support and thus are a critical tool for presidents. Our results are particularly relevant to a new emphasis in the political science literature on the “toolbox” that presidents utilize to address the challenges of simultaneously maintaining legislative support while implementing policy. These results demonstrate that the patronage coalition is a fundamental tool that should be more widely integrated into models of legislative-executive bargaining.