Front Pages Matter: Media Exposure Recasts Ministerial Relevance in Brazil's Coalitions

📰 What this note addresses: The allocation of ministerial portfolios shapes governability in Brazilian presidentialism. Objective measures of ministry relevance can clarify executive–legislative relations by showing which ministries matter most in coalition bargaining between presidents and political parties.

📰 How media exposure was measured: A construct of ministerial relevance exogenous to the government apparatus was added by quantifying public visibility.

• Frequency of each federal ministry's appearances on the front pages of the three Brazilian newspapers with the largest readerships was counted.
• The measure captures two related concepts: the relative prestige of ministries and their degree of public exposure.

📌 How this builds on prior work: The media-exposure variable was incorporated into Batista’s (2017) ministerial relevance framework to expand the theoretical conceptualization of what makes a ministry politically valuable during negotiations.

📊 Key findings:

• Media exposure provides an empirically useful complement to existing measures of ministerial relevance.
• Including front-page frequency strengthens the measurement of which ministries are salient to parties and presidents in coalition formation.
• The media-based measure is conceptually exogenous to the government apparatus, offering a distinct lens on portfolio relevance.

🔎 Why it matters: Adding media exposure to ministerial relevance sharpensthe understanding of coalition bargaining and executive–legislative dynamics in Brazil. This approach highlights how public visibility and prestige—shaped by news coverage—affect the political value of ministries during government formation.