The success of coalition management in Brazil owes a lot to the types of delegation processes that go on between the president, party leaders, and backbenchers.There are three main mechanisms through which the president keeps his coalition working in Brazil: budget execution, cabinet and bureaucratic appointments,and policy concessions.1 This article analyzes how attempts to rewrite the role of budget execution—and thus to change the patterns of interbranch delegation—failed from 1999 to 2008.