The study provides descriptive data on duration, attributes, and parliamentary activities in legislative processes at the level of individual law proposals. It examines all government proposals submitted to the Brazilian Congress between October 1988 and December 2012, tracing their legislative processes until the fall of 2015. The analysis

revealed that legislators’ activism to influence the content and outcome of policy proposals can account for much of the delays in the legislative process. However, substantial amounts of time also lapse without accompanying content-influencing legislative activism. Extensive procedural votes that occur in the Brazilian Congress suggest that legislative obstruction associated with political conflict between presidents and their own legislative coalitions and one between the government and opposition significantly contribute to legislative delay. Hence, political conflict is as important a source as policy disagreement in accounting for legislative delay.