Are rules-based government programs shielded from special-interest politics? Evidence from revenue-sharing transfers in Brazil

Manipulation of government finances for the benefit of narrowly defined groups is usuallythought to be limited to the part of the budget over which politicians exercise discretion inthe short run, such as earmarks. Analyzing a revenue-sharing program between the centraland local governments in Brazil that uses an allocation formula based on local population estimates,I document two main results: first, that the population estimates entering the formulawere manipulated and second, that this manipulation was political in nature. Consistent withswing-voter targeting by the right-wing central government, I find that municipalities withroughly equal right-wing and non-right-wing vote shares benefited relative to opposition orconservative core support municipalities. These findings suggest that the exclusive focus ondiscretionary transfers in the extant empirical literature on special-interest politics may understatethe true scope of tactical redistribution that is going on under programmatic disguise.

Rules vs. political discretion: evidence from constitutionally guaranteed transfers to local governments in Brazil

Can rules be used to shield public resources from political interference? The Brazilian constitution and national tax code stipulate that revenue sharing transfers to municipal governments be determined by the size of counties in terms of estimated population. In this paper I document that the population estimates which went into the transfer allocation formula for the year 1991 were manipulated, resulting in significant transfer differentials over the entire 1990's. I test whether conditional on county characteristics that might account for the manipulation, center-local party alignment, party popularity and the extent of interparty fragmentation at the county level are correlated with estimated populations in 1991. Results suggest that revenue sharing transfers were targeted at right-wing national deputies in electorally fragmented counties as well as aligned local executives.

Electoral competition through issue selection

Politics must tackle multiple issues at once. In a first-best world, political competition constrains parties to prioritize issues according to the voters' true concerns. In the real world, the opposite also happens: parties manipulate voter priorities by emphasizing issues selectively during the political campaign. This phenomenon, known as priming, should allow parties to pay less attention to the issues that they intend to mute. We develop a model of endogenous issue ownership in which two vote-seeking parties (i) invest to attract voters with "better" policy proposals and (ii) choose a communication campaign to focus voter attention on specific issues. We identify novel feedbacks between communication and investment. In particular, we find that stronger priming effects can backfire by constraining parties to invest more resources in all issues, including the ones they would otherwise intend to mute. We also identify under which conditions parties prefer to focus on their "historical issues" or to engage in issue stealing. Typically, the latter happens when priming effects are strong, and historical reputations differentiates parties less.

An agenda-setting model of electoral competition

This paper presents a model of electoral competition focusing on the formation of thepublic agenda. An incumbent government and a challenger party in opposition competein elections by choosing the issues that will key out their campaigns. Giving salience toan issue implies proposing an innovative policy proposal, alternative to the status-quo.Parties trade off the issues with high salience in voters concerns and those with broadagreement on some alternative policy proposal. Each party expects a higher probabilityof victory if the issue it chooses becomes salient in the voters decision. But remarkably,the issues which are considered the most important ones by a majority of votes may notbe given salience during the electoral campaign. An incumbent government may survivein spite of its bad policy performance if there is no sufficiently broad agreement on apolicy alternative. We illustrate the analytical potential of the model with the case of theUnited States presidential election in 2004.

Strategic ambiguity in electoral competition

Many have observed that political candidates running for election areoften purposefully expressing themselves in vague and ambiguous terms. In thispaper we provide a simple formal model of this phenomenon. We model theelectoral competition between two candidates as a two--stage game. In thefirst stage of the game two candidates simultaneously choose their ideologies,and in the second stage they simultaneously choose their level of ambiguity.Our results show that ambiguity, although disliked by voters, may be sustainedin equilibrium. The introduction of ambiguity as a strategic choice variablefor the candidates can also serve to explain why candidates with the sameelectoral objectives end up ``separating'', that is, assuming different ideological positions.

Negativity effect in multiparty electoral competition

We construct a dynamic voting model of multiparty competition in order to capture the following facts: voters base their decision on past economicperformance of the parties, and parties and candidates have different objectives. This model may explain the emergence of parties' ideologies,and shows the compatibility of the different objectives of parties and candidates. Together, these results give rise to the formation ofpolitical parties, as infinetely-lived agents with a certain ideology, out of the competition of myopic candidates freely choosing policy positions. We also show that in multicandidate elections held under the plurality system, Hotelling's principle of minimum differentiation is no longer satisfied.

Electoral competition under the threat of political unrest

We study elections in which one party (the strong party) controls a source of political unrest; e.g., this party could instigate riots if it lost the election. We show that the strong party is more likely to win the election when there is less information about its ability to cause unrest. This is because when theweak party is better informed, it can more reliably prevent political unrest by implementing a ``centrist'' policy. When there is uncertainty over the credibility of the threat, ``posturing'' by the strong party leads to platform divergence.

The Electoral Determinants of Collective Remittances: The Mexican 3x1 Program for Migrants

The 3x1 Program for Migrants is a matching grant scheme that seeks to direct the money sent by migrant organizations abroad to the provision of public and social infrastructure, and to productive projects in migrants’ communities of origin. To do so, the municipal, state, and federal administrations match the amount sent by hometown associations by 3 to 1. This opens the door to the political manipulation of the program. We explore the impact of a particular facet of Mexican political life on the operation of the 3x1: its recent democratization and the increasing political competition at the municipal level. Relying on the literature on redistributive politics, we posit that an increasing number of effective parties in elections may have two different effects. On the one hand, the need to cater to more heterogeneous constituencies may increase the provision of public projects. On the other hand, since smaller coalitions are needed to win elections under tighter competition, fewer public and more private (clientelistic) projects could be awarded. Using a unique dataset on the 3x1 Program for Migrants for over 2,400 municipalities in the period 2002 through 2007, we find a lower provision of public goods in electorally competitive jurisdictions. Thus, we remain sceptical about the program success in promoting public goods in politically competitive locations with high migration levels.

Natural resource windfalls and efficiency of local government expenditures: evidence from Peru

We study the role of natural resource windfalls in explaining the efficiency of public expenditures. Using a rich dataset of expenditures and public good provision for 1,836 municipalities in Peru for period 2001-2010, we estimate a non-monotonic relationship between the efficiency of public good provision and the level of natural resource transfers. Local governments that were extremely favored by the boom of mineral prices were more efficient in using fiscal windfalls whereas those benefited with modest transfers were more inefficient. These results can be explained by the increase in political competition associated with the boom. However, the fact that increases in efficiency were related to reductions in public good provision casts doubts about the beneficial effects of political competition in promoting efficiency.

Departmental elections and the changing landscape of French politics

The departmental elections of March 2015 redrew the French political landscape, setting the new terms of electoral competition in advance of the regional elections of December 2015 and, more critically, the presidential election of April–May 2017. These elections saw the far-right National Front (FN) come top in both rounds only to be outmanoeuvred by the mainstream parties and prevented from winning a single department. As a case study in vote–seat distortion, the elections highlighted a voting system effective in keeping the FN out of executive power but deficient in terms of democratic representation and inadequate as a response to the new tripartite realities of France's changing political landscape.

Les "grans negociacions" a la Unió Europea: la formació de preferències, les estratègies y l’èxit a les negociacions

Projecte de recerca elaborat a partir d’una estada a la School of politics and international relations, de la University College of Dublin, United Kingdom, entre 2007 i 2009. L’ objectiu del projecte present ha estat contribuir a l’estudi de les negociacions intergovernamentals a la Unió Europea (UE). En primer lloc, s’ha estudiat les estratègies de negociació del estats membres a negociacions intergovernamentals en la UE, per la qual cosa s’ha desenvolupat una tipologia d’estratègies de negociació, diferenciant entre les més agressives (conflictives) i les menys agressives (cooperatives). La conclusió principal ha estat que els actors difereixen en la elecció de les estratègies i que és precisament el poder relatiu dels actors que explica quines estratègies adopten. En segon lloc, s’analitza la ratificació dels resultats a les negociacions intergovernamentals, concentrant-me en l’us dels referèndums. La investigació mostra que els referèndums són sovint usats pels partits polítics com un instrument utilitzat durant les campanyes electorals, posant en dubte la tesis de que l’objectiu principal dels referèndums és influenciar els poder relatiu dels estats membres en negociacions intergovernamentals. Finalment, s’ha estudiat com els actors socials influeixen aquestes negociacions en la UE. La evidencia empírica clarament mostra que la pressió que exerceixen els grups de pressió es sovint subestimada.

The class basis of the cleavage between the New Left and the radical right: An analysis for Austria, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland

This chapter argues that the electoral competition between the New Left and the Radical Right is best understood as a cultural divide anchored in different class constituencies. Based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey, we analyze the links between voters' class position, their economic and cultural preferences and their party choice for four small and affluent European countries. We find a striking similarity in the class pattern across countries. Everywhere, the New Left attracts disproportionate support from socio-cultural professionals and presents a clear-cut middle-class profile, whereas the Radical Right is most successful among production and service workers and receives least support from professionals. In general, the Radical Right depends on the votes of lowereducated men and older citizens and has turned into a new type of working-class party. However, its success within the working-class is not due to economic, but to cultural issues. The voters of the Radical Right collide with those of the New Left over a cultural conflict of identity and community - and not over questions of redistribution. A full-grown cleavage has thus emerged in the four countries under study, separating a libertarian-universalistic pole from an authoritarian-communitarian pole and going along with a process of class realignment.

Religión y política en Colombia: la transformación de líderes religiosos en líderes políticos después de la Constitución de 1991

El estudio describe el fenómeno de la transformación de líderes religiosos en líderes políticos tras los cambios del sistema político en el contexto de la Constitución de 1991 y analiza algunos mecanismos recíprocos entre la esfera religiosa y política a partir del rastreo de casos emblemáticos. Se examinan las razones por las cuales diversos grupos e individuos religiosos derivados del mundo cristiano respaldan en espacios de competencia político-electoral a líderes que representan las comunidades de fe a las que pertenecen. Algunos de los colectivos religiosos reseñados han conformado partidos y movimientos de origen confesional, mediante el empleo de diversos dispositivos que han suscitado la instrumentalización de la política al servicio de objetivos de procedencia religiosa. La investigación señala la pervivencia del hecho religioso a lo largo de la historia socio-política colombiana, y a su vez, advierte la transferencia de hábitos y la persistencia de intercambios entre el campo religioso y el campo político en el contexto actual, fundamentalmente con respecto al posicionamiento de líderes carismáticos que, a través del uso de los recursos propios del ámbito religioso compiten por el capital político.