The Constituent Assembly that draws up the Brazilian constitution of 1891 is a battleground between those seeking to limit executive power, which is dictatorial under President Deodoro da Fonseca, and the Jacobins, radical authoritarians who oppose the Paulista coffee oligarchy and who want to preserve and intensify presidential authority.

The new charter establishes a federation governed supposedly by a president, a bicameral National Congress (Congresso Nacional; hereafter, Congress), and a judiciary.

However, real power is in the regional pátrias and in the hands of local potentates, called "colonels" (coronets, coronelismo).

Thus, the constitutional system does not work as that document had envisaged.

It will take until the end of the decade for an informal but real distribution of power, the so-called politics of the governors, to take shape as the result of armed struggles and bargaining.