The impact of mayor leadership on education: evidence from Brazil

What are the impacts of female mayors on education? It is well known that in Brazil, like in many other countries around the globe, women are underrepresented in political posts. Understanding the impacts of this discrepancy on policy choice and redistribution across many areas of inquiry is, therefore, an important research endeavor. Extant literature shows a strong link between women and the economic development of the areas they govern, specifically that they provide public goods relevant to the needs of women constituents. However, despite the efforts to explore the impacts of gender political leaders, we still do not know what is the consequence of gender on policy outcomes. Exploring a rich dataset on Brazilian municipalities, I intend to enrich the literature on the role of female politicians on politics. I employ a regression discontinuity design using Brazilian elections and indicators on education based on the basic education development index (IDEB), education expenditures and local policies. I find that municipalities where a woman enters into power do not perform better on education and do not present more investments or policies to improve education.

A influência da eleição de mulheres na participação política feminina: uma análise no cenário brasileiro

A participação política das mulheres é tema recorrente nos estudos sobre a desigualdade de gênero em diversas esferas da sociedade. Com uma literatura ainda incipiente, o estudo sobre o efeito que a eleição de mulheres tem sobre o aumento da participação política feminina em eleições subsequentes ainda não tem vertentes com foco no caso brasileiro. O objetivo deste trabalho é, mediante estudo dos dados do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), mensurar a influência que a eleição de mulheres para o cargo de prefeito tem sobre a filiação de novas mulheres aos partidos políticos em pleitos subsequentes. O quadro metodológico se desenvolve ao redor das regressões descontínuas (RDD na abreviação em inglês), cuja funcionalidade é testar descontinuidades estruturais que seriam causadas pela eleição de prefeitas. Dentre os resultados, encontramos relações causais dúbias e a ausência de robustez nas análises estatísticas não nos permite tirar conclusões que corroborem a hipótese testada no trabalho.

A gestão participativa em administrações municipais:as experiências de Natal e Maceió

Our object is to analyze the experiences in participative management in the cities o Natal and Maceió. The center of our interests is to evaluate if the operational changes in public administration in Brazil have really caused transformations in the municipal government which tend to constitute democracy in our country. The enlargement of civil society participation experiences in public management (at least as a proposal) has led to a great diversity of results even when executed by individuals from the same political party or with the same ideological interests. Thus, we investigate why the participative management process takes place in different forms even when the managers belong to the same party and share the same ideas. We based our analysis in the analytical scheme developed by Esping-Andersen (1991) in his studies about the cause for different welfare states in the world. We defend the thesis that the specifities in management are explained through an integrative analysis between the capacity of organization existent in society, the kind of govern coalition and the institutional legacy present in both cities. The complete analysis of the two experiences studied shows that there are similarities specially in the mayors government forms and in the importance they give in their speech to the participation of society as the element which sustains the management. Nevertheless, although both mayors are connected to the political party project, there are also differences in the advance of such process mainly because of the basis work performed by the left party among the popular movement, the kind of govern coalition which has been developed in the city and by the institutional legacy left by the former administration