ABSTRACT
There is nothing more difficult to manage, more dubious to accomplish, nor more doubtful of success than to initiate a new order of things. The goal of this chapter is to investigate the effects of the Brazilian political institutional arrangements on governmental effectiveness to promote state reform. The relationship between executive branches and Congress is better understood through principal-agent relations. It focuses on the institutional constraints that shape the political sphere as well as politicians’ behavior. The chapter has demonstrated that the widespread consensus in the literature, that the Brazilian Congress has been in general terms an obstacle to governmental implementation of reforms due to excessive fragmentation parties, is a partial generalization.
