Legislative Production in Brazil, 49th-51st Legislatures.

This paper examines the ability of the Brazilian Congress to pass important legislation. We identified as “significant” the issues mentioned in Brazil’s leading newspaper’s front page. We analyze, first, whether the Brazilian Congress was able to act upon those important issues, and second, how quickly it was able to pass them. We investigate the impact of such factors as ideological dispersion of legislators, government-opposition divide, bicameral distance, and types and areas of legislation in question. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]