Follow the elected members of parliament! The Brazilian Legislative Observatory is a plataform that measures, based on observable criteria, the degree to which members agree or disagree with proposed amendments to the legislative status quo on the following five topics of interest.
The 2018 elections have ended, but the work of those who were selected to represent their states at the National Congress is just about to begin – or to continue in the case of those who were re-elected. This justifies the importance of the Brazilian Legislative Observatory (OLB), which is a platform that results from a partnership between the Center of Studies on Congress (NECON) and the Laboratory of Studies of the Media and the Public Sphere (LEMEP), both of IESP-UERJ. The OLB has the objective to produce information and qualified analyses on the conduct of the members of parliament of the legislature. By means of the OLB, it is hoped not only to support the electoral selections of public, but also the political incidence of organizations from the civil society and social movements.
The main product of the OLB is a ranking that measures, based on observable criteria, the degree to which members agree or disagree with proposed amendments to the legislative status quo on the following topics of interest to civil society: Climate Change, Science and Technology, Healthy Eating and Children’s Rights. It is based exclusively on the activities that take place within the Chamber and the Senate, indicating the political position of the members of parliament.
“From the perspective of the partner organization, in the case of the iCS, i.e., of attributes that it considers are important and bills divided into categories of analysis as “very important, important and unimportant, we established a methodology that monitors the entire progress of the bill,” noting how the deputies participate in each one. In the case of climate change, for example, we analyze the positioning in speeches, amendments, opinions of rapporteurs and voting, each one with a different weighting for the final ranking. We realized that the best-ranked in the subject are the members from left-wing parties, and the worst-ranked are those from the center-right and right-wing parties. Another important characteristic is that the re-election rate was higher for members with a good ranking, unlike those who were in the last positions. These were replaced, in many cases, by members from the PSL, the party of the president-elect. We will need to be attentive to see what will be the effect of this readjustment of the Chamber,” said João Feres Jr and Leonardo Martins Barbosa, of the OLB .
In addition to expanding the base of the analyzed bills, in order to make the rankings even more complete, the OLB now also intends to analyze the performance of the senators. After the first year of the new mandates, there will be a consultation base for the bills approved by the new composition of the Congress for the creation of a new ranking, with the new composition of the National Congress. 2019, here we come!
This text is an opinion article published on our iCS’ newsletter in December 2018. If you want to receive our updated news, please sign here to the subscription list of our monthly informative.
