Latin America Advisor 2025-05-16 – Inter-American Dialogue

LATIN AMERICA ADVISOR

A daily publication Of the dialogue

May 16, 2025

What Would Lower House Expansion Mean for Brazil?

Brazilian lawmakers are considering legislation to increase size of the lower house of Congress by 18 seats. The Palace of the National Congress in Brasília is pictured. // File Photo: Gonzalo Gonzalez/Wirestock Creators via Adobe Stock.

Q

Brazil’s lower house of Congress on May 6 approved a bill that would allow for an expansion of the chamber, from 513 to 531 representatives. The legislation, which remains pending in the Senate, would require Brazil’s government to update the number of representatives in the lower house every four years. How would new seats be apportioned? How would an increase in representatives affect Congress’s political balance, and what is motivating the push to expand the chamber’s size? To what extent could this new legislation improve citizen representation in Brazil’s lower chamber?

A

Karina Stange Calandrin, post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the University of São Paulo and professor of international relations at the University of Sorocaba and Ibmec-SP: “Supporters of the proposal to increase the number of parliamentarians, which still needs to be considered by the Senate, argue it will correct distortions in population representation between the states, promoting greater federative balance. The new seats would be distributed proportionally to the size of each state’s population, according to data from the 2022 Census. States that have shown significant population growth—such as Pará, Amazonas and Santa Catarina—would gain additional seats, while states whose growth has been stagnant or negative would keep their current representatives, since the Constitution establishes a minimum of eight and a maximum of 70 deputies per federative unit. Currently, this creates distortions that…”

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Diego Arria
Director,
Columbus Group

Merike Blofield
Professor of Political Science,
University of Hamburg

Devry Boughner Vorwerk
CEO,
DevryBV Sustainable Strategies

Joyce Chang
Global Head of Research,
J.P. Morgan

Marlene Fernández
Corporate Vice President for Gov’t Relations,
Arcos Dorados (McDonald’s)

Peter Hakim
President Emeritus,
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Donna Hrinak
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Jon E. Huenemann
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GLG Inc.

James R. Jones
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Monarch Global Strategies

Craig Kelly
Senior Director,
Int’l Gov’t Relations,
Exxon Mobil

Barbara Kotschwar
Professor of Political Economy,
Georgetown University

John Maisto
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US Education Finance Group

Nicolas Mariscal
Chairman,
Grupo Marhnos

Thomas F. McLarty III
Chairman,
McLarty Associates

Beatrice Rangel
Director,
AMLA Consulting

Ernesto Revilla
Head of Latin American Economics, Citi

Gustavo Roosen
President,
IESA

Andrés Rozental
President, Rozental &
Asociados

Shelly Shetty
Managing Director,
Sovereigns, Fitch

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