In this study the authors analyse the relationship between the society and local authorities in the Legislative power, taking the requests (indicações) of council representatives of Rio`s Municipal Chamber (Câmara Municipal do Rio de Janeiro) to agencies of the municipal government and the city`s Mayor`s Office as subject, between 2001 and 2004. The objective is to analyse the political-electoral dynamics considering the strategies adopted by the representatives to get them re-elected or to occupy a different public post. The hypothesis of this study is that the political legislators use the requests in order to intermediate Executive/voter's relationship and by doing so build their electoral connections. The info used in this study is secondary and qualitative and is built on an Access Ms base and was obtained from Rio de Janeiro`s Council Representatives requests data bank. Its content consists of the characteristics of the requests made by the representatives, such as the year of issue and the specific area of the city, between 2001 and 2004. The base, which was transferred to Excel, was refined and in it each request was categorized according to investments, maintenance or immaterial services it was destined to. The tables of simple frequency and contingency were generated in the SPSS package. The data which characterizes the appointments was assembled and patterns of timing, kind and their final destination in the city of Rio de Janeiro for their emission have been observed. The number of requests available is the total number of those issued by the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro in the above mentioned period. They represent both the studied population in a specific period and a thorough sample of the ample and dynamic historical process that generates these requests. Submitted to descriptive analysis and theχ² test the data partially confirmed the research hypothesis. Firstly, it suggests that the council representatives are inclined to use the requests so that the welfare or public service is built and delivered by the executive power within their mandate. Secondly, by doing that, the representative's aim at providing welfare or public service that will cover the public needs detected by themselves or by the voters. The study also suggests that the requests generally considered not so relevant or important by some political scientists and the press as a whole can be important tools in the formation of political networks and should be further analysed. The data still points to the need for new researches to ratify if requests are in fact mainly assigned to the council representatives` electoral areas to better understand why not all political representatives use requests with the same frequency. The hypothesis still to be checked is: Do politicians with more locally concentrated votes tend to use this prerogative more often than those who have more global votes?
Municipal Chamber; representatives' requests; electoral connections; interest intermediation; Executive-Legislative relationship
