Enlarging the Playing Field: Political Circulation of Brazilian Senators in the First Republic *

Abstract

The article analyzes the career patterns of Brazilian senators during the First Republic. It explores whether there is any relationship between the establishment of a structure of political opportunities and the recruitment patterns of this segment of the parliamentary elite. The aim is to assess the circulation among the political positions attained before reaching the position of Senator. The research consists of the systematic observation of the biographies of the 851 holders of senatorial mandates from the 21st legislature (1890/1891) to the 37th senatorial term (1934/1937). Results suggest that the political careers of senators extended in time and have become more diverse in terms of the political instances they encompassed. The new institutional framework, with more positions facing electoral competition and the strengthening of state-level policy, has intensified political circulation among government levels (municipal, state and federal) and the decision-making arenas (executive and legislative). These results show that the legislative recruitment patterns identified in the literature devoted to the second half of the 20th century were already outlined by the senatorial political elite of the First Republic.

Headnote

The article analyzes the career patterns of Brazilian senators during the First Republic. It explores whether there is any relationship between the establishment of a structure of political opportunities and the recruitment patterns of this segment of the parliamentary elite. The aim is to assess the circulation among the political positions attained before reaching the position of Senator. The research consists of the systematic observation of the biographies of the 851 holders of senatorial mandates from the 21st legislature (1890/1891) to the 37th senatorial term (1934/1937). Results suggest that the political careers of senators extended in time and have become more diverse in terms of the political instances they encompassed. The new institutional framework, with more positions facing electoral competition and the strengthening of state-level policy, has intensified political circulation among government levels (municipal, state and federal) and the decision-making arenas (executive and legislative). These results show that the legislative recruitment patterns identified in the literature devoted to the second half of the 20th century were already outlined by the senatorial political elite of the First Republic.

Keywords: First republic; Brazilian senators; political career; political circulation; federalism.

This article deals with the relationship between the structure of political opportunities and the career patterns of Brazilian senators elected during the First Republic (1889-1930). The career of the representatives was understood, by the body of work studying legislative recruitment in Brazil, as a privileged resource for understanding political circulation within the public offices and therefore, indirectly, for identifying the relationship among the institutional environment, political opportunities and individual strategies.

Comparative studies on political careers in federal systems indicate that the patterns of political careers in Brazil are much more heterogeneous and open than those found in the USA and Germany (BORCHERT, 2009). According to this author, Brazil offers a large field for the game of political ambitions, increasing the frequency of movements between the arenas (executive and legislative) and levels of government (municipal, state and federal).

From this proposition, we analyze how the number and types of positions available to anyone who aspires to a political position in Brazil change the profile of the parliamentary elite. In a word, we aim to investigate the extent to which the change in the structure of political opportunities (due to the introduction of the election for governors, mayors and senators) has modified the path taken by Brazilian senators.

The most appropriate historical period for such investigation is at the establishment of the republican regime: the new conditions for obtaining an electoral mandate from the first Republic led us to study the political career of Brazilian senators elected between 1890 and 1934.

Therefore, we argue that the institutional arrangement established in the First Republic, to enhance electoral activity at the sub-national level, diversified and strengthened the political careers of the members of the Upper House. More specifically, we intend to empirically measure how the implementation of a federal political structure and an environment favorable to political circulation are reflected in the length of the careers of the senators and their circulation in the several political posts they occupied before reaching the Senate.

With the proclamation of the Republic, candidates for mayors, representatives in the lower chamber, governors, senators, President and Vice- president of the Republic were elected by direct vote1. The parliamentary legislatures had mandates of three years in the House and nine in the Senate (with one third renewed every three years). Add to that the posts of state representatives and senators, which existed in some States, and we have a system with intense electoral activity at the bases (TELAROLLI, 1982, p. 64).

Under the monarchy, senators were appointed by the Emperor from a triple list drawn up by the provinces. There were no regular elections because the post was for life: the Senator composed a privileged mechanism through which the Emperor rewarded or co-opted regional political allies as a channel of access to the top of the political structure. According to Cerqueira Leite (1978),

... the office of senator represented the culmination of a brilliant career [...] It was necessary that the future senator had already conquered important steps in the art of politics, had hands-on learning and the school could only be, then, the holding of some positions such as representative, president of the province, minister, diplomat and state adviser (CERQUEIRA LEITE, 1978, p. 44).

So, the Senate was closer to the Union than to the province and its connection was under the auspices of the Crown.

This characteristic of the senatorial mandate was quite consistent with a centralized political structure like the imperial regime. According to José Murilo de Carvalho(2003), the Brazilian imperial bureaucracy was shaped like an inverted pyramid, in which the number of positions and salaries was highly concentrated at the top of the system, in contrast to the American structure with a strong focus at the local level. So, "the consequence of this centralized structure was the accumulation of officials and administrative activities at the central level of the government, its reduced presence at the provincial level and its near absence at the local level". (CARVALHO, 2003, p. 152)2.

The adoption of a federal structure presented an essential change in the form of the exercise of political power. The decentralization of the political structure implemented by the constituents of 1891 stipulated standards that raised the sub-national political game to another level, in which the states would work as the counter-balance in national politics. One of the main factors that unified the architects of the new regime was precisely the role of state politics:

...it was on the issue of political autonomy that all the provinces, without exception, united to support the federalist project, because only in this respect could there be an 'equalization' of benefits to all units of the Federation. Political autonomy meant ending the control that the Central Government had over local elections and, above all, ensuring the electivity of former presidents of the province, who became state governors. (ABRUCIO, 1998, p.33).

If, by 1889, it was politically possible that the careers of senators were guided by an exclusively national logic (since the status of Senator was a prerogative of the Moderator Power), after that date the careers of these representatives would, necessarily, have to go through the "accounts" of the elites that were dominant in the states of the federation.

Therefore, it is reasonable to expect a reconfiguration of the profile of the individual who reached the senate as of 1889. The new parameters established by the republican political structure turned senators elected during this period into a privileged object to be exploited in order to assess how a new institutional environment (federal and elective) changed the profile of the elected representatives. In other words, if the senator of the Empire was a sort of statesman, a typical man devoted to political functions, an individual with experience in the provincial presidencies, the House of Representatives, the Council of State or the Ministries (CERQUEIRA LEITE, 1978, p. 44), what would be his path after the collapse of the Empire, after all? What was the Republican politician's path to the Senate?

The measurement of the path followed by the elected persons can reveal important clues about the establishment of new conditions for political competition and about the differences in the recruitment mechanisms of the parliamentary elite by the various sub-national units. As we hope to demonstrate throughout the article, the First Republic may contain the source of trends that have been diagnosed in the Brazilian political elite throughout the 20th century.

This article is organized in six sections (in addition to the introduction). In the next item, we highlight what we mean by political circulation and how it is discussed in the principal works on Brazilian parliamentary recruiting. Shortly thereafter, we recall what is already known about the Brazilian political elite in the First Republic. Next, we introduce the research procedures; then, we highlight an item for the presentation of the results of the senatorial elite and a section for the analyses broken down by states. Finally, in the conclusion, we summarize some perspectives that can be used to interpret the meaning of our empirical findings.

The application of the concept of political circulation in Brazil

The forerunner to the theme of circulation of the political elites in Brazil, José Murilo de Carvalho(2003), distinguishes two meanings of this notion: outward circulation and inward circulation. The first, typically paretian, refers to the renewal of the elites and the entry of new individuals within the leading groups3. The second points to the possibility of exchanging different positions within the same group (CARVALHO, 2003, p. 128). In his work on imperial politics, one of the most important pieces of evidence to characterize the training of the political elite in this period is the ability with which the traditional agents of the national elite switched between different positions until they reached the Ministry or the State Council - a different trajectory, according to Carvalho (2003), than that of the senators because, according to him, the lifelong character of the Senate gave the holders less political circulation vis-à-vis the provincial representatives and presidents. In general, the Senate was relatively blocked against the symbiosis between the legislative and executive powers. According to Carvalho (2003), the Senators "would not let go of the Senate, which became for them a kind of Siberia" (CARVALHO, 2003, p. 128).

The issue of political circulation was recovered by researchers studying the predominant recruitment patterns from the 1946 Constituent up to the recent legislatures. Marenco dos Santos (2000) suggests that high rates of parliamentary renewal are an endemic phenomenon among Brazilian politicians. In his words, "to increase the levels of recruitment and lateral movement, the structure of opportunities for entry and circulation in the political career, has contributed to restrain the appearance of cohesive groups in the federal legislative power" (MARENCO DOS SANTOS, 2000, p. 21). This pessimistic diagnosis is also supported by David Samuels (2003), in saying that the combination of strong federalism with proportional representation results in congressmen uninterested in remaining in the House of Representatives. According to his argument, parliamentary retention is low because there are other options to fulfill the ever growing individual ambition for power over public policy, especially in the executive branch at the state level (SAMUELS, 2003).

More recently, Santos and Pegurier (2011) have attempted to review the idea that career discontinuity is associated with the lack of significant political experience. According to this new assessment, which goes against Marenco dos Santos (2000), we can observe higher levels of prior experience if we consider that "the new members elected to the Chamber are experienced politicians at the local and state levels" (SANTOS and PEGURIER, 2011). Regarding Samuels (2003), they argue against the idea that the low retention in the House of Representatives is not the product of a weak institution, devoid of decision-making capacity and of low interest to professional politicians, but of an intense flow of career circulation that shows high competition for elective posts in the country. They argue that the ways out of the legislative branch do not mean a lack of well-defined political boundaries but, rather, that their definition occurs with the integration between the legislative and executive powers. Moreover, the office of federal representative should be seen as an important springboard for a diversified career that goes through state executive positions (SANTOS and PEGURIER, 2011).

The three articles mentioned above are very concerned with the measurement of political circulation in and out of the House of Representatives from 1946 onwards. However, according to Carvalho (2003), the occurrence of the phenomenon in the imperial period seems to indicate that it may have ocurred in the various regimes in our political history. Therefore, exploring the phenomenon in the "Old Republic" can add more evidence about its constitution during that period, which had not yet been discussed in studies about the topic.

What we know about the political elite during the First Republic

Some publications that have emerged over the past two years seem to characterize a revisionist movement about parliamentary politics in the First Republic. The most important contribution in this regard has come from the analyses of Paolo Ricci and Jaqueline Zullini (2013) about the "beheading" process of diplomas by the Election Certification Committee, in the House of Representatives (RICCI and PORTO ZULINI, 2012; RICCI and ZULINI, 2013). The system of representation of interests in this period was also approached by Fernando Limongi (2012) and Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos(2013) in two recent articles. The most recent publication that gathers information about the senators whom we are studying was published by Pedro Neiva and Mauricio Izumi (2014). The authors do a study of the evolution of professions of Brazilian senators since 1826, and this work also raises a number of important empirical questions for the study of elite politics (NEIVA and IZUMI, 2014), but the authors did not examine political career or the political recruitment process itself.

Among the studies that appeared in this revival of the Brazilian parliamentary politics of the First Republic, the one that is more directly linked to the object of this article resulted from the study that Paolo Ricci and Jaqueline Zulini (2014) conducted on the dynamics of the election process in the First Republic. Their study makes a thorough presentation on the evolution of the institutional framework governing the electoral process4, aiming to understand the political function of formal requests challenging the election results. The central question of the study asks why the election results were contested in the First Republic, and the basic problem is the meaning of the political competition within the election process.

One of the main conclusions of this study suffices to clarify the difference between this article and our proposal. According to the authors,

...the practice of fraud must be understood beyond the subject of the distortion of the truth. It is a fact that the literature devoted to the First Republic attempted to downgrade the form of competition in the Republican era. In this article, however, we show that the importance of the practices of distortion of the vote should be reconsidered, framing them according to competition standards in vogue at that time (RICCI and ZULINI, 2014, p. 466).

We try to align with this perspective when retrieving aspects obscured by conventional interpretations of parliamentary politics in the First Republic. However, our work is in the field of political recruitment studies, on the political career of Brazilian senators with emphasis on political circulation. These clarifications should be enough to differentiate our research proposal from that of Ricci and Zullini (2014). Still, we should underline this distinction stressing that the central problem investigated by them is the quality of political competition, focusing on the institutional dimension of the electoral practice, to the detriment of the specifically volitional dimension of the interpretation made by contenders about the opportunities available in a federal and Republican regime: "in our view, a better understanding of the disputes at the time, requires a critical review of the role of the central actors, such as the parties and institutions themselves - rather than the deepening of the usual discussion of the willingness of individuals and the very question of citizenship" (RICCI and ZULINI, 2014, p. 467).

Most of the available knowledge about the Brazilian political elite in the First Republic comes from studies devoted to sub-national units. Since the mid-1970s, systematic studies of the political elite in some states of the federation in the first republican experience were carried out. The main research project was conducted by Joseph Love (1982), John Wirth (1982) and Robert Levine (1980), when the three authors developed a database on the political elite of the "Old Republic" in three States: São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Pernambuco.

In general, the results show that, from the perspective of social background, the elites of the three states are extremely homogeneous. They were all reluctant to accept individuals from the working class; the three groups have much higher university education levels than the rate of literacy of their states; and, in the three groups, the Bachelors of Law were the majority (exceeding of 70%).

These constants, however, do not occur when the authors analyze the career patterns of the three elites. The first differentiating factor in the elite of the three states appears in diachronic analysis. The empirical findings revealed that, as the generations evolved, the Paulista elite turned out to be the most provincial, progressively increasing the recruitment within the state - the evidence is the percentages of individuals who were born outside the state: in São Paulo they were 22% in the first generation, and this value drops by half in the third. Compared to other states, Love (1982) asserts that

...only 17% had had jobs outside of São Paulo (whether in administrative or political positions or in the private sector). In Minas Gerais, however, the ratio was 22% and a surprising number of persons from Pernambuco was included in this scenario (44%), which can be explained by the fact that there are fewer job opportunities in that state. Furthermore, less than one third of Paulistas served in the federal congress, while more than half of the Mineiros and Pernambucanos did (LOVE, 1982, p. 223).

Another difference among the elites of the three states that calls a lot of attention is the percentage of individuals who held only one political public office throughout the period covered by the survey: they are 75% in Pernambuco, 58% in Minas Gerais and 54% in São Paulo. The analysis of careers reveals important differences regarding mobility between positions: 25% of Pernambucanos who had more than one post did not have a well-defined profile, whereas "similar data from Minas Gerais and São Paulo indicate that, in both places, if government secretaries did not next move on to the palace as presidents (governors) they went to the federal service. However, in Pernambuco, a state secretariat office was like an end in itself "(LEVINE, 1980 p. 173). The less developed private job market in Pernambuco can explain the search for public posts as sinecures, according to Levine; at the same time, it helps us understand why the elite of this state was more open to young people (17% of the members of the Pernambuco elite held high positions before the age of 30, whereas in Minas and São Paulo these values were 5% and 4%, respectively).

However, when referring only to the standards of those that had a legislative career, the study shows that Mineiros and Pernambucanos were more inclined to have legislative mandates in the federal capital than the Paulistas. About 50% of the two elites had legislative experience at the federal level, while among the Paulistas, only 31.7% did. On the other hand, experience in the state legislature is more prominent among Paulistas (48.6%) than among Mineiros (47.4%) and Pernambucanos (30.9%). The data on the members of the Executive Committee of the Paulista Republican Party (PRP) confirm the lack of circulation of the Paulista elite since, according to LOVE (1982), "of the 64 members of the leadership of the PRP between 1889 and 1936, 70% belonged to the first generation, 28% to the second and only 2% (that is, a single person) to the third" (LOVE, 1982, p. 228).

São Paulo had the most bureaucratic system, in which the main route of access was, according to Love (1982), a career in the PRP. Usually, it assumed some years of service in towns of the interior as a condition for ascending to higher posts in the PRP hierarchy. Wirth (1982) clearly states the division of functions within the Mineiro universe, which will allow young graduates to be replaced by the second step to the same extent that it deepened the bond of the "super-bosses" with the small towns of the interior - characterizing the high isolation of the Mineiros. As an overview, we note that the access road to the elite universe in Pernambuco went through the university and connections to the most influential families of the capital - the two attributes were more important than belonging to the economic elite, since "in a predominantly agricultural and export-oriented society, the vast majority of political leaders came from the liberal professions, not from state interest groups" (LEVINE, 1980, p. 172).

These findings clarify important points about the political elite at the sub-national level and in various political sectors, since the relationship of positions examined in the study by Love(1982), Wirth(1982) and Levine (1980) is wider, including the governor, state secretaries, bureaucrats, party leaders and even police chiefs. Thus, their results point to the potential of a systematic examination of the recruitment process of the strictly parliamentary segment of the Brazilian political elite during this regime, which remains a blind spot that extends from 1890 to 1934 (year of the last election for the National Congress before the coup which suppressed the representative regime until 1945). Santos and Pegurier (2011), for example, claim that "political careers in terms that may be compared to those of other modern democracies, have been in existence only since 1946. From 1822 to 1930, during both the Empire and the First Republic, careers were extremely constrained by limitations imposed on both candidates and voters, as well as by election systems that allowed control, or outright rigging of results, by local political powers" (SANTOS and PEGURIER, 2011, p. 167).

The evidence gathered below on the senatorial elite from all Brazilian states during the period of the First Republic will make it possible to question that statement. Such information can help us bridge the gap that remains between the Empire (studied by CARVALHO (2003) and CERQUEIRA LEITE (1978)) and the period beginning with the Constituent of 1946 (subject of the works previously presented). Furthermore, the work of the regionalists has already suggested traces of political circulation during the First Republic. The question remains, therefore, as to how these trends behave having the population composed of senators elected at the national level during the first republican experiment as empirical object.

Object, materials and methods

The information raised concerns the total of 358 persons who held the 851 mandates from the 21st legislature (1890-1891) to the 37th (1934-1937). Strictly speaking, this group includes the mandate holders in the Second Republic (1934-1937) but, as it is only one parliamentary term which would not be completed due to the end of the representative regime in the country in 1937, we decided to keep the 44 holders from 1934 in the base. Each entry in the database refers to one mandate.

Three sources of data collection were combined. The first one refers to the biographical records produced by Department of Information Technology of the Federal Senate, which is responsible for the maintenance, updating and processing of the Senate databases - PRODASEN. Every individual who has passed through the Senate contains a biographical record, which provides information for individual identification, spouses, professions, membership to political parties, but above all, public offices and elective mandates.

Since it is a short record, the lack of highly relevant information, such as the dates of the posts, is not uncommon. Thus, the second source used comprised the entries of the Dicionário Histórico Bibliográfico Brasileiro, prepared by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation CPDOC. Until the middle of 2013, biographies were written only of politicians after 1930 but, in the second semester of 2013, CPDOC made public a list with the entries of the politicians of the First Republic. The third source used to gather information helped us to accurately determine who the mandates holders were. We tabulated the entries of the Federal Senate website5 of the oldest legislatures using the entry dates in the legislature as the criterion to designate if the person was the holder in the year that the legislature began.

The data base provides information about the political career, which records all the public offices (elective and non-elective), the year of entering and the year of leaving office. This file places the offices in chronological order and each line ends with the office of Senator. The main indicators handled in this study refer to the offices held until reaching the Senate, and the length of time of the career. This was obtained by subtracting the year in which his first public office was recorded from the year the senator was elected.

Since the time variable plays an important role in the adaptation of the agents to institutional constraints, these indicators will always be tested according to five time intervals6: 1890/1900 (when four elections were held), 1903/1909 (three elections), 1912/1918 (three elections), 1921/1930 (four elections) and we will separate the 1934/1937 period as the last legislature. Thus, we would have distributed the period of the First Republic in a relatively even manner, disaggregating in the fifth segment those elected in the 1930s. This aggregation seeks steps more or less long which serve as a thermometer for the changes in general trends and avoids the excessive weight that a few cases may exert over the behavior of the variables.

The political career of Brazilian Senators during the First Republic

One of the first pieces of information regarding the political career refers to the time spent until reaching a specific position and the amount of positions held in that interval. Tables 01 and 02 indicate that part of the senators of the First Republic had limited political experience: in the first decade they display a mean of less than 15 years of experience prior to the office and held fewer than 05 public offices until reaching the Senate. These indicators grow significantly with the passing of time and the consolidation of the regime. Table 02 shows that the median number of positions occupied goes from 03 to 07 among those elected at the beginning and at the end of the Republican period. The parliamentary elite before the Revolution of 1930 reaches an average of about 20 years of political experience prior to the office (exactly 21.21 years), doubling the career time in public office in relation to those elected in the last decade of the 19th century (when the median was 10.07 years until reaching the Senate).

These are the first pieces of evidence that, since the end of the Imperial period, the changes in the senatorial career are clearly based on the passage of time. The increase in the average values of career time and the number of positions suggests that the political structure gradually shaped the career profile of senators. Symptomatic of the strong leadership exercised by the very experienced elites during the third period (1912-1918) is the degree of uniformity in which the career time is manifested during this period, verified by the coefficient of variation of Table 01, which exhibited the lowest values during this period.

Considering the group of those elected in the period from 1890-1900 as those most similar to the imperial congressmen, we realize that the patterns displayed in two tables change significantly with respect to those elected from 1903. So, it seems to be correct to say that the senators elected during the initial decade of the Republic were remnants of the imperial period: their entry period into political activity occurs mainly in the 1870s. A minimal portion of those elected between 1890 and 1900 began their career when the Republican period was already established. Therefore, we take the elite of the 1890s as a sort of "elite of transition" whose characteristics illustrate the imperial regime more than the budding Republican period. Consequently, the changing profile of the political elite corresponded to the consolidation of the structure created in 1891, which can be better noticed from 1903.

These data on curricular length and quantity, although suggestive, still give a very general perception of the career of the senators.

The trajectory of a senator after the Proclamation of the Republic will differ greatly from that described by Beatriz Cerqueira Leite (1978). In fact, his picture portrays what we showed for those elected in the last decade of the 19th century: about four positions held, approximately 10 years of political career. Starting from the twentieth century, the career of the senators will fragment into a variety of positions, to the point of each career being unique, especially if we consider the specificities of the routes and the order of positions for each case. To avoid such a fragmentation of the evidence and loss of sight of the whole, the careers were categorized into four very different types:

A. Short and homogenous careers: up to five positions and with public positions in only one sphere of government7;

B. short and heterogeneous careers: up to five positions and with public positions in more than one level of government;

C. long and homogeneous careers: more than five positions and with public positions in only one level of government;

D. long and heterogeneous careers: more than five positions and with public positions in more than one level of government.

These four categories were observed from the perspective of their distribution among the periods. This association can be refined if we identify where there is a higher incidence of each of the four categories within the period, through analysis of the standardized residuals8. Table 03 summarizes this information.

Table 03 reveals a very well delineated profile of the senators elected during the 1890-1900 period (taken the remnants of the Empire as a proxy). Those who had positions in only one level of Government and held fewer than five positions (short and homogeneous careers) had a huge advantage (+6.9) over those who held six or more positions. This is confirmed by the negative residuals in the group with long careers, whether they were homogenous (-2.8) or heterogeneous (-4.8).

These patterns reversed completely over time. In the second group (1903-1909), the position and the sign of the significant residuals are reversed, because the tendency towards the concentration of cases is now in the cell of those who held long and homogeneous careers (2.8). This is to the detriment of the 32 cases classified as having short and homogeneous careers, which presented a negative residual of 3.3 in this the second period. The trend of the low occurrence of cases in the "short and homogeneous" category remains consistent until the end of the regime (-2.9 in 1912/1918 and -3.9 in 1921/1930); and only among those elected to the legislature, post-1930, were significant residuals found in the "short and heterogeneous" category, which leads us to believe that the replacement of the regime significantly changed the political career of the individual who reached the Senate.

About 20 years were enough to change the pattern of political expertise of the senatorial elite. These data point to greater political circulation among offices and to a longer trajectory inside the Brazilian state. However, the data do not clarify in which levels of government that experience was taking place. When careers are disaggregated into specific positions and levels, there is practically a combination of every individual who moves among municipal, state or federal positions. As a parameter of the nearly unique character of the sequence of positions of individual careers, senators with more than six positions in their careers (N=212) were isolated, and only 23 of them showed identical combinations. For example, there were state secretaries, state representatives, governors, federal representatives, ministers and senators in this sequence. 189 careers had differences of one or, more often, several positions following the trajectory. This lack of standardization is evidence of how the offer of positions opened up, to the political elite, a large number of political positions to develop a political career. It also reveals that the current "big playing field ", as nicely said by Jens Borchert (2009), had the first lines defined from the federative structure established with the republican regime in Brazil.

Since there were few individuals (the population is 358 men), we can assume that they moved among the same positions. To measure the levels of government of these careers, Table04 adds the itineraries according to the passage through one, two or three levels of government and relates them to the set of the five periods studied9.

Upon examining the percentages in the column of those who had state and federal experience, it is evident that circulation between governmental levels is not present at the start of the First Republic. Rather, this is a trend that intensifies over time. In this sense, the description of José Murilo de Carvalho (2003), according to whom the the careers of the Imperial Senators "was limited to the general election for representative and, from there, to the Senate, which they did not leave" (CARVALHO, 2003, p.127), agrees with the traits observed for the senators elected in the first period analyzed here. In other words, the journey to state offices was not a characteristic of the senators elected immediately after the Proclamation, but it would become so for those elected in the 20th century. The standarized residuals indicate that there is a positive association (+2.9) between exclusively federal experience and having been elected in the 1890/1900 period, whereas this association is negative for those having experience in the three governmental levels (-3.2). It is noted that the outlines of the careers change substantially at the end of the First Republic (1921/1930): the senators who passed through the lower levels grew to the point of those who had passed through the three levels, such that they obtained a positive association with that period (+4.6). This provides sufficient information to prove that, in addition to the longer time, the more diversified the number of positions, the paths they took began to rely on the state and municipal levels during the First Republic.

The role of the state governments, in the distribution of political power in the subnational spheres, has been consolidated by the history of this period. Table 04 presents important data, which is, 19.3 percent of the cases had exclusively federal experience10. These data may be interpreted in two ways. First, they may show that nearly 1/5 of the senators did not have their careers guided by the governor's plans. This shows a relative independence of the senatorial segment of the parliamentary elite, mitigating the perspective that the careers were guided exclusively by state policy.

On the other hand, the higher percentage is shown in the second column (experience at the federal and state levels) and may be read as an indicator of the change of the parameters of the calculation for career progress. This was mentioned in the introduction of this study: with the advent of the Republic, the logical career progress goes through the accounts of subnational policy, given the fact that 57.7% of the observations of the senators showed experience in the state and federal spheres. These data point to an effect of the federal structure of political opportunities, the place where political expertise is acquired. According to Fernando Abrucio (1998), "this is the fundamental point that leads a federal arrangement to success, since both the political class and the citizens have their processes of political socialization performed at the subnational levels of government" (ABRUCIO, 1998, p.28). This feature will be stronger if we consider that passing through the municipal and state levels (in addition to the federal) emerges as a fundamental characteristic in the final phase of the regime - which is revealed by the positive residual of 4.6 among those elected between 1921 and 1930. These findings reinforce the perspective that the Republican Senator is a very different political type from the Imperial Senator since the "prebendary" character of the position (arising from the life tenure of the position and the appointment by the emperor from the three-name list) disappears in a political structure guided by regular elections and whose center of power revolves around the states.

The contrasts among the main states

It is worth exploring one of the recurrent issues in the investigation of the expansion of the electoral mobilization and its impact on the profiles of the representatives: the format and extent of the territorial spread of the attributes of the circulation of the political elite. The mobilization to win votes is seen as uneven in the different regions of a country. Consequently, it is necessary to analyze separately the effects that different levels of local political organization produce on the career patterns of elected representatives in each region.

Therefore, in this sub-item, we raise the possibility that changes in the institutional frame that define access to positions do not produce identical effects on the elites of different regions. This perspective echoes the results obtained in research on the professionalization of the political class in Northern Europe: "earlier studies of political recruitment in Norway have indicated that the professionalization process developed unevenly across geographical and political regions". (ELIASSEN, 1974, apud ELIASSEN and PEDERSEN, 1978, p. 316).

It is an unfolding of the general issue of the text: beside time, space may be an intervening variable in the dissemination of career patterns arising from the new institutional arrangement. The starting point, the speed and the process of crystallization of the rules on the career choices of agents may not be the same in different states. To test the possible regional diversity of incorporation of the new institutional arrangement of state elites, Graph 01 separates the career time of senators elected in four states and checks the variation of their medians in the five periods mentioned above. On the one hand, in order not to dilute state differences in regions and, on the other, not to put an excessive amount of cases that would compromise the interpretation, the selected states refer to the classic cases studied by regionalists who investigated political elites in Brazil: Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul11 and São Paulo. The differences identified by Brazilianists can help in the interpretation of these contrasts.

It can be observed that the starting point of the curves is quite distinct: Rio Grande do Sul and Pernambuco had elites clearly less long-lasting at the beginning of the period. Minas Gerais had an elite with a long career, already in the early days of the Republic, which was reinforced by the new context of competition and extension of the political training program. Rio Grande do Sul is the more symmetrical state in relation to the national standard. It should also be emphasized that the senators from Minas Gerais (according to the median) had a much longer career length than their peers during the renovation of this stratum of parliamentary elite after 1930. In general, however, the trend is for growth of state medians and a tendency towards homogenization of patterns of previous experience of the states regarded as protagonists of the national policy of the period, although with specific starting points and contrasting timings.

In addition to the time of the previous career, it is possible to examine the circulation patterns in the lower levels of the federation in the same states previously chosen, as shown in Graph 02. The information represented by lines refers to the percentage of senators who did not have only a federal career; that is, those who acted in two spheres (federal/municipal or federal/state) or in three levels (federal, state and municipal) of government.

In general, the regional center becomes a constituent element of careers since 1903 for the four states. These are changes produced by the new institutional structure and the increase of political competition at the lower levels of election contests. However, it is clear, first and foremost, that the circulation follows a state logic.

Over the periods, there is a tendency (not confirmed in Pernambuco) of increased circulation among two or three levels which is characteristic in every state. Minas Gerais, on the one hand, has an elite that has been present in two or three levels since 1903. São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, on the other hand, have an elite that moves more and more in that the following decades. The three states (MG, SP and RS) have 100% of their senators with political circulation at the federal level in 1930. The federal verticalization of careers, which generally did not occur in the Empire, is now to be the feature of the senators of the first republican experiment. This verticalization seems to exercise a kind of inertial force on the parliamentary elite of the twentieth century, as it is still a specific characteristic of this elite, today (BORCHERT, 2009; SANTOS, 2010).

One of the difficulties in comparing our data with the results obtained in the project initiated by Joseph Love (1971) is that these studies deal with the state's elite as a whole, and not just the parliamentary elite. Nevertheless, it makes sense to imagine that the profile of the senators elected in the three states reflects, to some extent, the characteristics of the political elite of which they were part in their states. To do that, it is enough to bear in mind that, in the distribution of the districts that elected the federal representatives, Minas Gerais had 12 districts which elected 37 members; in São Paulo there were 07 districts which elected 22 members; and, in Pernambuco there were 05 districts which elected 17 representatives. According to Wirth, Minas Gerais "as a mosaic of different regions was organized as a federal mini-system [...] in general, they saw the Federation as an extension of their region" (WIRTH, 1982, p. 231).

This helps in the understanding of why the curve of senators from Minas Gerais, with presence in the three levels, is stable in Chart 02. The decline in the curve of senators from São Paulo may reflect the provincial character of the state's political elite due, among other factors, to the powerful control that the machine of the Paulista Republican Party exerts on the careers of those aspiring to a public post. The decline in the circulation of senators from Pernambuco can be a function of the isolationism that affects the political elite of the state, as "Pernambuco has acted like a political region centered in itself, despite its characteristic of being a natural leader in the Northeast. In fact, the failure of Pernambuco in making the Northeast act as a block in congress is a very important topic in the history of the state" (LEVINE, 1980 p. 22).

The four curves displayed in Chart 02 show the percentages observed in each state and, even if they point to somewhat idiosyncratic positions, the limits of this information should be highlighted. Since the Republican Constitution of 1891 decided that each State could have only three representatives in the Senate, the quotas rendered generalizations about the state political representation impossible12 - an obstacle that could certainly be overcome with a base formed by federal representatives.

Main conclusions

This article presents three fundamental empirical findings, from which we can draw some conclusions.

First, as the decades go by, holders of the office of senator have longer political careers. This finding can be observed under at least two interpretative keys: first, we can infer that individuals who spend more time of their lives in political activity are professional politicians, in the canonical definition of Max Weber (2011).

To explain this finding, we measured how much the careers became more diversified, identifying that individuals who reached the senate had more positions in the three spheres of Government over time, increasing political circulation. That is, the profile of the senatorial career in the First Republic suggests that reaching the elite position requires individuals to draw up a strategy for the progression of positions joining the possible aspirations in the national sphere with the opportunities offered by state/local politics.

The diversity of career moves at the individual level can also be perceived as follows: isolating the careers of senators who held at least six positions before taking office, we realized that only in 23 situations the holder went from the local, state or federal sphere directly to the senate. This means that 89.15% of them held many intermediate positions in the three spheres of government before reaching the Senate. The lack of a cursus honorum, i.e., a uniform path, common to most careers to the Senate seems to indicate that, at the federal level, the available playing field allowed numerous strategies for the establishment of a political career.

The second finding that our study revealed is the lack of a univocal sense for the circulation of the senatorial elite. This finding allows us to resume the divergence between Santos and Pegurier(2011) and Marenco dos Santos (2000). We can agree to the position of the first ones when they emphasize the importance of the political experience in sub-national levels; but also, this finding can match the second when we observe that "a federal system offers greater diversity of routes for a political career, with the availability of public positions on multiple institutional levels." (MARENCO DOS SANTOS, 2000, p. 230)

The third and final empirical finding that must be emphasized is that the two features identified in the senatorial elite (longer and more diversified careers) are not evenly distributed among the sub-national units. Our data suggest that the structure of political positions affect differently the profiles of Senators drafted in different States. Such a difference can be credited to variations in the strategies of the "players", since the nominal ratio of positions categorized is fixed, it is necessary to recognize that the calculations of the agents are determined to some extent by the logic of the states. In this case, the resumption of the positions of the classic regionalist can contribute to better understand how new institutions adapt unevenly to different local socioeconomic profiles.

A different interpretation from that presented here could challenge the results found by our data, stressing that the association of career patterns with the new structure of republican political positions could contain more continuity features than ruptures in relation to the imperial period. This objection would emphasize that the change from the imperial to the republican regime had few consequences on the fringes of the political system, because foundations of the recruitment mechanisms of the political elite would have remained relatively constant. From our point of view, this objection can be object of examination for the Chamber of Representatives but not for the Senate because, for the first time, individuals are elected to a term in the Senate. This means that, with the end of life tenure, it is necessary to run for reelection regularly, and that is a novelty of the republican political form that singularizes the empirical object of this article with respect to the former imperial senators. The significant change in values between those elected in the period of 1890-1900 and the other periods is an empirical finding that seems to reinforce this conclusion.

If the assessment of these findings is correct, this article signals the importance of devoting efforts to the study of the elite in the First Republic, because it seems that the parliamentary career of the "Old Republic" contains clues to unravel the source of recruitment patterns being diagnosed after 1946.

Translated by Viamundi

Submitted in July 2014

Accepted in April 2015

Sidebar

For replication, see bpsr.org.br/files/archives/Dataset_Massimo_Costa.html

We would like to thank CNPq for the resources which financed the research that resulted in this article, as well as the observations and criticisms from Adriano Codato, Renato Perissinotto, Flavio Heinz, André Marenco dos Santos and Pedro Tavares de Almeida. The comments from the anonymous reviewers of the Brazilian Political Science Review helped to improve the material greatly, for which we are grateful. We extend, here, our thanks to the collaborators from COARQ (Coordination of the Archives of the Federal Senate) for the access to data and the help with the handling of primary sources.

Footnote

(*) http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1981-38212015000300022

1 Elective positions during the Brazilian Empire were Senator, General Deputy, Members of Provincial Assemblies, Municipal Judge and Alderman. Municipal Judge and Alderman were elected by direct vote in the city. For the other positions (Senators and general deputies or members of the Provincial Assemblies), the elections were indirect (or in two degrees). The first Brazilian electoral standard, Law No. 387, 19 August, 1846, "would call as voters only those who voted in the elections for representatives, senators (to create the three-name lists submitted to the emperor) and members of the provincial assemblies" (CAVALCANTI et al., 1975, p.65). This standard follows what is prescribed in Chapter VI of the constitution of 1824, according to which the "voters" were designated by their "votings", they should be men, native Brazilians, not slaves, older than 25 years, not religious and with a net annual income greater than one hundred thousand réis. The indirect election was only abolished in the electoral reform of 1881 (according to Article 1 of Decree No 3029, 9 January 1881, also known as the Saraiva Law). The conditions for elegibility were the same (except for the census criteria, which were more restrictive).

2 Even though Carvalho(2003) refers to the bureaucratic structure of the Brazilian Imperial State, it is also legitimate to extend this notion to the political structure of the Empire. Simon Schwartzman (2007) makes the same evaluation of the Imperial period from Francisco Iglésias' book: "The first element that stands out in this work is the hierarchical and centralized system of authority at the national level. The presidents of the provinces were appointed by the emperor and their loyalty and fidelity were totally oriented toward the central government." (SCHWARTZMAN, 2007, p. 176).

3 It is important to stress that, in this study, we do not use the term in this sense because we denote, with the term "circulation", the passing of the same individuals through different public positions instead of designating the substitution of the social types that compose the universe of the elites. We prefer to keep the word "circulation" as an alternative to the term "change" (which is very generic) and, at the same time, avoid a very specific expression like "turnover" or "exchange".

4 Making it evident that the first steps in the creation of the electoral code of 1932 were present in the electoral reform of 1916 (Law No 3208/1916), but also, in 1904 the Rosa and Silva Law already had improved the duties of the electoral judges (see Note 9, in RICCI and ZULINI, 2014, p. 469).

5 http://www.senado.gov.br/senadores/periodos/legisAnt.shtm. Access in May, 2015.

6 We thank the reviews of the Brazilian Political Science Review for the suggestions and improvements of this aggregation.

7 The criterion for designating up to 05 offices in the short/long dummy is that this is the median shown in Table 02 for the total of offices in the entire period. The offices may be elective or non-elective at the municipal, state or federal levels. The relationship of possible non-elective offices is as follows: non-elective office at the municipal level (municipal secretaries, hospital directors, etc.), non-elective office at the state level (1st-tier positions: state secretaries), non-elective office at the state level (2nd-tier positions: bank and institution presidents, police chiefs), non-elective office at the federal level (1st-tier : ministers) and non-elective office at the federal level (2nd-tier: secretary, advisor, etc). The relationship of elective offices also separates the careers of the three levels: alderman, mayor, state representative, governor (and vice-governor), federal deputy, senator, president (and vice-president).

8 According to which, values greater than 1.96 (positive) indicate a trend toward concentration of cases, inversely, negative values greater than 1.96 indicate the low occurrence of cases.

9 Attempting to measure the career as a whole, the position of senator was included. Aggregated thus, the variable does not contain a category without being updated at the federal level, such that the categories refer to the other possible combinations, all containing the passage through the federal level.

10 This aspect was correctly noted by the anonymous reviews of the BPSR.

11 We include Rio Grande do Sul, as this was the first state analyzed by Joseph Love (1971) in the research project that later would include São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Pernambuco.

12 Of the 851 senators in the entire period (1890-1934), we find 45 from the state of Minas Gerais, 44 from Pernambuco, 42 from Rio Grande de Sul and 42 from São Paulo.

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