Which policies matter? Using emphases in the legislative agenda to measure salience

Abstract

What are the most emphasized themes in the Brazilian legislative agenda? This article explores the thematic emphases based on the classification of legislative proposals in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 1995 and 2014. The aim is to present a specific and comprehensive classification to identify emphases differences and describe which are the most prioritized themes, by whom and how they vary over time. I present a classification on legislative agenda topics carried out using unsupervised machine learning. The salience measure is constructed based on the number of initiatives proposed by each actor on a given theme over time. The research contributes to the debate by offering a measure of salience for the main political actors over time, which can be applied in a range of assessments, from the Executive-Legislative relationship to National Congress clashes of interests.