State Legislators’ Ambitious:

career patterns in the Brazilian multi-level system.

Resumen

The political career of federal deputies is marked by intense movements across municipal, state, and federal territorial levels, with high legislative turnover. Given that the state level is a strategic sphere to learn about political circulation, are the state legislators pursuing careers within the legislature or are they trying to move further on? What are their career prospects? This study aims to investigate the career after state legislature of 1.152 state parliamentarians from seven states. The empirical research adopted a career approach, which consists of seeking career patterns through analysis of all offices held in each individual trajectory. The findings suggest that a mandate in the state assembly is a stepping stone to other political positions. Differences in trajectories are found across states, clarifying that state arenas matter to political trajectories since subnational units offer different structures of opportunities. The majority of politicians had ambitions for federal posts, with the exception of São Paulo with local ambitions, Santa Catarina with state ambitions and Goiás with both local and federal ambitions. This study exposes the main routes to state and federal offices and promotes better comprehension of the complex Brazilian career pattern.