Octavio Amorim Neto and Fabiano Santos, "The Executive Connection: Presidentially Defined Factions and Party Discipline in Brazil," Party Politics, 7 (March 2001), 213-234.

First Paragraph:
Recent comparative analyses of democratic assemblies posit a two-step relationship between electoral strategies and legislative behavior (Lancaster, 1986; Cain et al., 1987; Cox, 1987; Mainwaring, 1991; Shugart and Carey, 1992; Ames, 1995; Morgenstern, 1996). The first step relates electoral institutions to the type of vote cultivated by candidates. Two types of vote are identified: one personal, the other partisan. Electoral institutions such as nomination rules, seat allocation formulas and district magnitude are assumed to play a key role in determining the prevalent type of vote in a given polity (Carey and Shugart, 1995). The second step links type of vote to legislative behavior. Here the key hypothesis is that the more personal the vote, the more individualistic the legislator behavior. Conversely, the more partisan the vote, the more partisan the legislative behavior.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Distribution of seats per party (%) in the Chamber of Deputies (1946-63) p. 216
Table 2: Average discipline of the largest parties per legislature (1946-63) p. 218
Figure 1: Yearly Discipline Rates for the PSD, UDN and PTB (1946-1963) p. 219
Figure 2: Yearly Discipline Rates for the PR and PSP (1946-1963) p. 220
Table 3: Party membership of presidential cabinets in Brazil (1946-64) p. 226
Table 4: Electoral heterogeneity of Brazilian parties after five election (1946-63) p. 228
Table 5: The determinants of party discipline p. 228

Last Paragraph:
Finally, the role of presidential hopefuls requires further study. In this article we theorized that they are key actors in the mobilization of opposition to presidents, and have incentives to challenge the latter in a radical fashion. This, in turn, leads presidents to use the bait of patronage to coopt opposition parties. We need to better understand which resources presidential aspirants have with which to fight incumbents and become successful candidates in patronage-based systems.