Replication Data for: News Media and Connectivity in Deliberative Systems: Reflections on the Debate about the Brazilian Age of Criminal Responsibility, published in BPSR, Vol. 15, N. 1, 2021

The distribution of ministerial portfolios in the formation of government coalitions in Brazilian presidentialism is a crucial factor in determining the governability of the political system. Objective measurement of the relevance of ministries to political parties offers a means of shedding light on the relations between the executive and legislative branches of Brazil’s government. This research note aims to improve the empirical measurement of the relevance of Federal ministries in negotiations between presidents and political parties by including a fundamental theoretical aspect to political behavior: the media exposure of the various ministries. Given the importance of the media in shaping the political agenda and public opinion, we have expanded the theoretical conceptualization of the means to effect such measurements by adding a construct of ministerial relevance that is exogenous to the government apparatus. We have made empirical use of concepts such as the relative prestige of the various ministries and the degree of public exposure to them by quantifying the frequency of their appearances on the front pages of the three Brazilian newspapers with the largest readerships. Our results demonstrate the empirical utility and theoretical complementarity of the insertion of a variable relating to media exposure into Batista’s ministerial relevance (2017).

巴西总统制下联合政府组建过程中的内阁职位分配，是决定该国政治系统治理效能的核心因素。对各部委与政党的关联度进行客观测算，可为揭示巴西政府行政与立法部门间的关系提供可行路径。本研究短论旨在优化总统与政党谈判过程中联邦部委关联度的实证测算方法，为此纳入了政治行为的核心理论维度：各部委的媒体曝光情况。鉴于媒体在塑造政治议程与公众舆论中的关键作用，本研究通过引入一个政府体系外生的部委关联度构念，拓展了此类测算方法的理论概念框架。本研究通过量化各部委在巴西发行量前三的报纸头版的出现频次，对其相对声望与公众曝光程度等概念开展了实证运用。研究结果表明，在巴蒂斯塔（Batista, 2017）的部委关联度模型中引入媒体曝光相关变量，兼具实证实用性与理论互补性。