Download Electoral System, Party System and Incentives

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XXIV ENCONTRO ANUAL DA ANPOCS
23 a 27 de Outubro de 2000, Petrópolis - RJ
GT 06: INSTITUIÇÕES POLÍTICAS
LOCAL VERSUS NACIONAL:
QUAL A MELHOR ESTRATÉGIA PARA SER REELEITO NO BRASIL?*
VERSÃO PRELIMINAR
Carlos Pereira ([email protected])
Research Fellow, Centre for Brazilian Studies – University of Oxford
Lúcio Rennó ([email protected])
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pittsburgh
Uma versão preliminar deste trabalho foi apresentado no Seminário Estudos Políticos organizado pelo
NEMESIS no dia 29 de maio de 2000 no IPEA, Rio de Janeiro. Gostaríamos de agradecer aos
participantes do seminário, em especial a José A. Cheibub pelos comentários. Somos também
extremamente gratos a Fernando Limongi pela sua interlocução, sugestões e comentários. Gostaríamos
ainda de sinceramente agradecer a Bernardo Mueller pela assessoria econométrica bem como pelos
relevantes comentários e a Eduardo Leoni pelos sugestões.
*
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Introduction
The purpose of this article is to analyze the determinants of reelection for the
Chamber of Deputies in the 1998 Brazilian elections. There are various competing
explanations for the electoral success of incumbents. Some of these hypotheses were
operationalized and tested using aggregate level data. The question that we attempt to
answer is; what factors result in a higher payoff, understood as being reelected, for the
incumbent? Hence, the purpose is to identify the variables that differentiate successful
incumbents from unsuccessful ones in the 1998 elections.
The rival explanations where divided into two major groups of variables. The
first group is composed by local level political factors. What these variables have in
common is a specific geographical restriction to their scope. That is, these variables
refer to the performance of the candidate in issues that directly affect his electoral
stronghold. The second group of variables refers to the involvement of the incumbent
in national issues, his/her participation in Congress, and how national level actors,
such as the President and political parties, affect elections for the Chamber of
Deputies.
Besides this introduction, studies that focus on legislative elections in open-list
proportional representation systems will be discussed. These studies point out specific
characteristics of this electoral system that bare relevance to electoral strategies. It
must be said that the purpose is not to be exhaustive and inclusive in the discussion of
the studies, but to focus on those that offer a clear description of the functioning of
this kind of system. Explanations formulated for other institutional environments,
such as that of the US, were also employed in orienting the formulation of hypotheses.
Following the discussion of the relevant literature, the hypotheses and
variables will then be defined and the data analyzed. A multivariate logistic regression
model, oriented by preliminary tests of difference in means, will be employed. We
give each variable an equal one-shot chance of affecting the likelihood of reelection.
Yet, simultaneous equation models would be more appropriate to measure the
intricacies of the process and to deal with possible problems of reciprocal causation.
One of the main findings that we come upon is the irrelevance of roll call
voting records and the participation of the incumbent in Lower House activities in the
outcome of elections. Most of what incumbents do in the Chamber of Deputies that is
not directly related to the constituency’s interest does not have an impact on his/her
likelihood of getting reelected. A possible explanation is that the Federal Deputy’s
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vote in the Chamber is not an end in itself, but a means for obtaining federal largess
for his electoral strongholds. Such activity might only have an indirect impact in the
elections.
Critical Dialog with the Theory
The purpose of this section is two-fold. First, three streams of literature that
deal with legislative elections in Brazil will be reviewed. These include studies about
the characteristics of the Brazilian electoral system and its influence in the party
system, voter’s electoral behavior, and the behavior of the Deputy inside the Chamber
of Deputies. The reason for this discussion is to offer a description of the constraints
faced by incumbents imposed by the institutional framework and behavioral patterns
in which the electoral process is imbedded. Second, studies that focus specifically on
individual reelection strategies will be analyzed. This is useful to point out some of
the relevant hypotheses already tested by the literature. In a sense, the objective is to
map what has been and what has not been tested, and based on this, elaborate and test
new hypotheses through an alternative model that takes into account local and
national variables at the same time. This alternative model is inspired by previous
studies focusing on the case of the US.
As was said, there are basically three streams of literature dealing with
relevant traits of the Brazilian political system that are closely related to electoral
strategies, albeit these research trends do not directly stipulate the relation between
the electoral system and the success of campaign strategies. The first one refers to the
study of the impact of the electoral system on the party system (Nicolau 1996,
Tavares 1998, Lamounier 1994, Ignacio 1997). A second research agenda is related to
the role of Deputies inside the Chamber of Deputies. The focus shifts from electoral
rules to rules inside Congress and how these affect the behavior of Deputies (Pereira,
2000; Argelina e Limongi, 1999; Novaes, 1994; Ames, 2000; Santos, 1995; Samuels,
1998). A third trend of research is related to the electoral behavior of voters (Baquero
1997, Rua 1997). The approach here is less on the effects of institutions and more on
the opinions and behaviors of voters. The purpose is to explain why individuals vote
in a certain way. Despite the obvious distinctions, these approaches are
complementary and serve the purpose of qualifying the scenario where incumbents
are making choices about their campaign strategies.
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Electoral System, Party System and Incentives to Reelection
The studies about the effects of the electoral system in the party system clearly
indicate that some institutional aspects of the Brazilian political system impact the
competition for public office. A first repercussion of the electoral system is the
personalization of political campaigns (Ignacio 1997, Tavares 1992). Both majority
system for offices in the Executive power and the personal vote formula in the openlist system for offices in the Legislative tend to concentrate the electoral process in the
candidate and not in the party. In addition, the open-list system stimulates competition
between candidates of the same party, leading to an even more fragile control of
parties over the election strategies of its members (Ames 1995). Recall that in openlist proportional representation, the party lists that stipulates the ranking of the
deputies is defined after the elections and is based solely on the individual voting of
each deputy. Hence, fellow party members might end up being even stronger
challengers than members of other parties.
A collateral effect of the emphasis on the candidate is the fragility of parties
(Lamounier 1989). Parties become similar to at-large electoral fronts, without any
practical influence over the success of its members (Ignacio 1997). Contributing to
the frailty of parties in the electoral arena is the possibility of forming coalitions in
proportional elections. The singularity of the Brazilian electoral system, according to
an author, is that there is no instrument of calculating the contribution of each party in
the total vote of the coalition (Nicolau 1999). The formation of coalitions is used as a
way of weakening the requirement of the electoral barrier.1 Such electoral
configuration increases the overall competition of races and decreases the influence of
parties in the outcomes of the elections.
Legislative Behavior and Chamber Rules
The major concern of the studies that focus on the voting behavior of Deputies
inside the Lower House is to evaluate how the Chamber’s rules and the electoral
incentives created by the electoral system affect the voting record of Deputies (Santos
1997). There are those who say that inside the Chamber what defines the behavior of
1
Electoral coefficients are calculated dividing the number of valid votes by the number of seats in each
district. Small parties tend to engage in coalitions, amongst other reasons, in order to increase their
chances of reaching the stipulated coefficient. Coalitions count as a single entity for purposes of
achieving the coefficient and what defines the positions in the coalition list is the voting of each
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Deputies to a great extent are the political parties (Figueiredo e Limongi 1995, 1999).
On the other hand, there are those who argue that the individualizing effects created
by the electoral system transcend the doors of the Chamber of Deputies. In this view,
Deputies are extremely independent of party influence in the legislative arena mainly
as a consequence of the incentives to defect created by electoral rules (Novaes 1994,
Ames 1995, Forthcoming).
Pereira (2000) defends an intermediary position. According to him, there is no
contradiction between weak parties in the electoral arena and strong ones inside the
Chamber, in the legislative arena. The Brazilian political system creates centrifugal
and centripetal forces that affect the control of parties over its members. The final
result of bargaining in Congress varies according to specific votes. In some instances
parties are the decisive actors, in others individual Congressmen have wider margins
of maneuverability.
Distributive policy, understood as policies with diffuse costs and specific
benefits (Lowi 1963), is an area where this duality becomes especially evident.
Deputies are granted the right of presenting budgetary amendments benefiting
localities and organizations as they see fit. Parties have almost none, if any, influence
on the decisions made by Deputies regarding both how they allocate their
amendments and the approval of these amendments. However, the approval of the
budgetary amendments by the floor does not guarantee that federal funds will be
automatically disbursed. The Executive power is the one responsible for in fact
defining if and when the money will be available. This gives the President and the
party leaders that support the President, a very impressive bargaining instrument,
which is commonly used as a form of influencing the voting behavior of Deputies
(Pereira 2000, Ames Forthcoming). Since voting records inside the Chamber of
Deputies don’t seem to affect election results, incumbents feel quite free to exchange
their votes in roll calls for pork funds.
Rules inside the Chamber of Deputies seem to make Deputies less
independent than they seem to be when one only considers the electoral rules.
Deputies seem to use the resources made available by the office, especially the use of
pork barrel policies, in order to increase their visibility back home. Deputies are
willing to follow party leadership indications in their voting behavior if this leads to
candidate, independent of the overall contribution of each party to the total vote obtained by the
coalition.
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the disbursement of larger amounts of Federal largess. In fact, this is exactly the core
of Pereira’s (2000) description of the Brazilian electoral connection.
Electoral Behavior
Having mentioned the institutional incentives and constraints to reelection,
both inside and outside the Chamber, it is useful to verify how some of these factors
are replicated by voters’ behaviors. The literature about voter’s electoral behavior in
Brazil emphasizes three factors: Low relevance of political parties in voters’
preference formation (Baquero 1997, Rua 1997), growing pragmatism of the voter
(Baquero 1997), and low visibility of the incumbent.
The emphasis on the candidate, instead of on the party, is as much a
consequence of the institutional framework as it is a preference of the electorate.
Voting for parties is allowed in Brazil, yet very few voters chose to do so. This is
evidence that parties do not influence the choices made by voters. Public opinion data
also shows that the percentages of the population affiliated to political parties or that
sympathize with political parties is also very low (Renno 2000). Parties just don’t
seem to be part of the common citizens concerns.
Furthermore, even though citizens tend to vote on candidates and not on
parties, incumbents have very low visibility. Again public opinion surveys show that
only 20% of voters in some states remember in whom they voted for on the previous
elections.2 A possible consequence of this finding is that individuals have little control
over what their representatives do in Congress. If someone cannot recognize his/her
representative, how will this Congressman be set accountable for his activities in
Congress? This is related to the fact, mentioned in the introduction, that the voting
record of Deputies inside the Chamber has very little influence in his electoral
success.
The growing pragmatism of the voter pointed out by Baquero (1997) is
another factor concurring to the emphasis on distributive policies. Some Deputies
tend to concentrate their vote in contiguous municipalities in order to lower the costs
of campaigning (Ames 1995). Abrucio (1998) has gone as far as calling these
electoral strongholds “informal districts”. In this case, the relation between the voter
2
This data was obtained in the Federal District in 1996. In the municipality of Rio de Janeiro in a more
recent survey, only 10% of the population said they could remember for whom they voted in the
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and the representative might become closer than what is usually the case in districts
with magnitude greater than one. This closeness might increase the ability of
controlling the behavior of the representative. Since voters are becoming pragmatic in
their demands when it comes to setting politicians accountable (Baquero 1997), pork
barrel policies and not ideological positioning of the representative indicated by
his/her voting record gains relevance during electoral campaigns.
Determinants of Reelection
The aspects of the Brazilian political system pointed out above contribute to
influence the outcomes of elections and the strategies of politicians striving to get
reelected. Some of the above factors increase the chances of incumbents. The
ambiguous relation between voter and representative gives incumbents a reasonable
amount of freedom to act as they wish during their term in office. Their main concern
is to provide pork barrel projects to electoral strongholds and the only hassle is to
obtain the liberation of funds.
On the other hand, the extreme fragility of political parties in the electoral
arena and the permissiveness of the electoral rules increase the amount of competition
incumbents have to face when attempting reelection. As the literature about the
effects of the electoral system on the party system point out, electoral rules increase
the chances of all candidates and weaken the possible barriers imposed to candidacies.
This weakening of the parties and high competition overall raises the prices of
campaigns and places the entire burden of attaining funds in the individual candidates.
As a consequence, incumbents tend to concentrate their votes in spatially adjacent
municipalities in order to lower the costs of campaigning (Ames 1995a).
Despite their evident contribution to the debate, the studies mentioned earlier
do not directly explore the consequences of incumbent’s choices. They all very
proficiently describe the context in which elections take place and the resources
available for incumbents, but they don’t attempt to deal with the issue of electoral
strategies per se. It is time now to turn our attention to a couple of pioneering studies
that focus on identifying the determinants of reelections and the patterns of political
careers in Brazil.
elections for the Chamber of Deputies. We would like to thank Zairo Cheibub and Alberto Carlos
Almeida for this information.
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Ames’ (1995) work is geared towards explaining the results of the 1990
elections for the Chamber of Deputies. The dependent variable is the actual total vote
received by the incumbent on each municipality. The model developed to explain the
variation in the vote is the first attempt to evaluate electoral strategies in open-list
proportional representation. The independent variables included are the characteristics
of the municipality, the spatial distribution of the vote, the incumbent’s career
characteristics, and the allocation of pork barrel projects, in the form of budgetary
amendments.3
The spatial distribution of the vote refers to how the actual vote obtained by
the deputy is spread out through the state and inside each municipality. 4 Ames came
up with a typology of vote patterns based on two variables: dispersion/concentration
and domination/sharing.5 Deputies who conjugate domination with dispersion have
higher chances of winning (Ames 1995). However, those who concentrate but
dominate also have favorable chances compared to those who only share. In fact,
sharing and concentrating is probably the worst combination.
The individual characteristics of the candidate encompass his electoral
vulnerability and his career. Vulnerability this time is measured by the incumbent’s
position in the party list in the previous election. Since the party lists are defined after
elections based on the vote obtained by the candidate, the position in the list is an
indication of how strong electorally the incumbent is. Regarding the incumbent’s
career, Ames differentiates between those who have held elected offices in the past,
the ones who worked in the bureaucracy, and those that come from families
3
In this work Ames uses the demographic and economic characteristics of the municipality to calculate
the electoral vulnerability of the candidate and his social match with the constituency. The migratory
rate of the municipality is the proxy for vulnerability. The assumption being that changes in the
population of a region might negatively affect the constituency of the incumbent. The incumbent might
loose faithful voters. Social match, in turn, is operationalized by verifying if the characteristics of the
candidate, such as religion, profession, economic status, are similar to the mean characteristics of the
population of the municipality, if so, the chances of the incumbent increase.
4
In Brazil, the electoral districts are defined by the boundaries of each state. This means that there are
27 electoral districts. The magnitude of the districts ranges from 8 to 70, depending on the size of the
voting population in each state. The federal organization of the country further divides the states into
municipalities, yet these are not formally considered electoral entities. In spite of this, municipalities
can be used to identify incumbents’ electoral strongholds (redutos).
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The index of dispersion is calculated by dividing the total vote of the candidate in the at-large district
by his vote in each municipality. This is a way of verifying how spread the vote is throughout the state.
The index of domination is defined by dividing the total vote of a municipality by the vote obtained by
a specific incumbent in this municipality. It is hence the share of votes of the incumbent in a
municipality. This is a way of verifying how effectively the incumbent dominates the municipalities
where he obtained votes.
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traditionally involved with politics. Deputies with distinct careers have distinct
patterns of spatial distribution of the vote and distinct chances of getting reelected.
The last and most important variable of his model is the number of budgetary
amendments presented and approved by the incumbent. Ames argues that claiming
the transmission of public funds to specific localities has a central role in the electoral
strategies of incumbents. Claiming credit for pork barrel projects, to use Mayhew’s
(1974) expression, is the one single most consistent factor affecting election’s
outcomes.
But Ames’ study has not gone uncriticized. David Samuels argues that the
political phenomenon to be studied in Brazil is not reelection, but the high levels of
turnover in the Chamber of Deputies (2000). Due to progressive ambition of some
Deputies and to the vulnerability of the remaining ones, Brazil’s tradition is a high
turnover rate. According to Samuels, the institutional structure of Brazil does not
stimulate reelection. In complete opposition to Ames, Samuels argues that pork barrel
projects in the form of individualized budgetary amendments has very limited effect
in the outcomes of elections.
Deputies’ aim mostly at getting offices in the Executive power and being a
Federal Deputy is only a trampoline for their progressive ambition (Samuels 1998).
The electoral vulnerability of the incumbents who have static ambition – desire to stay
in the Chamber of Deputies – is reflected in campaign expenditures.6 Deputies,
according to Samuels (2000), have to spend a reasonable amount of money in order to
get reelected. This conclusion is based on the evidence that the mean expenditure of
those reelected is greater than of those who lose.
Ames’ and Samuels’ researches are strongly influenced by the analysis of the
electoral connection between voters and Representatives in the US. However, neither
Samuels nor Ames explore some of the key variables pointed out by the literature on
House elections, referring specifically to the legislative roll of Congressmen and their
relation with the President. In addition to leaving out important variables, the models
developed by both authors also have a further downside. Both evaluate budgetary
amendments as credit claiming. They focus on the effect of the number of
amendments presented to the municipality; they do not analyze the impact of the
amount of money spent in localities coming from these amendments.
6
For a discussion about political careers and ambition see Jacobson (1989), Brady, Backley, & Rivers
(1999) and Hibbing (1999).
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It is useful now to mention some of the legislative studies in the US in order to
point out the deficiencies of present studies of reelection in open list proportional
representation. Mayhew (1974) clearly differentiates between three strategies adopted
by incumbents. Credit claiming refers to the propaganda made by the incumbent of
his work in the House. Pork barrel/casework strategies refer to how effective the
Representative is in disbursing particularized benefits with diffuse costs. Finally,
position taking refers to the posture adopted by the Representative in voting inside the
House. The purpose of these activities is to increase the visibility of the incumbent
and all of them are in the root of incumbency advantage and the vanishing marginals.
Brazilian Federal Deputies have access to similar resources, however only the
electoral impact of credit claiming, operationalized as the number of amendments
presented, has been evaluated in Brazil. This is one of the gaps that we attempt to
overcome.
The discussion about what is more relevant, what offers the greater payoffs,
pork barrel or position taking, is a central debate on the literature about legislative
elections. Johannes and McAdams (1998), for example, emphasize that the legislative
efficiency of the Representative is more decisive in influencing the constituency than
pork barrel projects. Representatives that are influential and active legislators get
higher payoffs than those who only concentrate in distributing pork barrel.
Bickers and Stein (1996) and Serra and Cover (1992) counter argue that pork
barrel projects and casework have an indirect effect on the outcomes of reelection.
These strategies scare away high quality challengers and are useful to gain the
approval of voters that didn’t originally support the candidate. In other words,
distributive policies increase the base of support of the incumbent and restrict the
competition in the districts. They are signs of the concern of the Representative with
his district.
Campaign finance is also a hot topic in the discussion about legislative
elections in the US that has not been sufficiently explored in the Brazilian case.
Legislative efficiency (Box-Steffenmeier & Grant 1999) and the personal
characteristics of Representatives (Mondak 1995) are central factors in influencing the
amount of money incumbents receive during campaigns and hence are central
components of electoral success.
Nevertheless, the exact impact of campaign finance on elections is far from
consensual in the US. Jacobson’s (1990) thesis is that the more an incumbent spends,
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the lower are his chances of getting reelected. On the other hand, the chances of the
challenger increase when he/she is well funded. Money spent by the incumbent is a
sign of vulnerability. Green, Krasno, and Cowden (1994) question this argument and
point out that the timing of the donation is a central factor. Incumbents who get early
money scare away high quality challengers. In addition, the power of reaction of the
incumbent, meaning his ability of raising funds in distinct moments of the race, is
higher than that of challengers. Thus, incumbents spend money to avoid the growth of
opposition in his district (Thomas 1989).
Recall that in Brazil, what has been said about campaign expenditures is
basically that candidates who win elections spend more than those who lose (Samuels
2000). But the variation in the amounts of money spent and the impact of campaign
expenditure in the elections has not been verified in a model that incorporates other
rival explanations. Besides, a very simple descriptive variable that helps understand
the impact of campaign expenditure - measures of variability such as standard
deviation - has not been analyzed. This study will also attempt to fill this gap.
In addition to position taking, credit claiming, and pork barrel, there are
factors beyond the control of the Representatives that also affect his/her electoral
success. National issues, such as presidential coattail effects, management of the
economy, timing of the elections and the role of political parties also influence the
outcome of elections. These factors are responsible for affecting the environment in
which each specific election takes place.
Political parties have a significant role in legislative elections. Parties serve the
function of giving information to the voters. In the situation where the voter knows
nothing about the voting records of incumbents, party identification serves as a
surrogate for ideological preferences (Erikson 1988). Since Stokes and Miller (1962)
have shown that the American electorate does not follow with attention the voting
patterns of their Representatives, parties serve an important role of signaling the
preferences of the incumbent.
Nonetheless, the role of parties in the electoral process does not seem to be
any more than a source of information. Parties play a limited role in the recruitment of
candidates since the primary elections have removed some of the influence of party
leaders (Kazee & Thornberry 1990). On top of that, the role of the party organization
in campaigns is decreasing over time (Herrnson 1986). In the four domains of
electoral campaigns; management, advertising, fund-raising, and voter mobilization,
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parties appear only to play active role in the last domain. Party activists are still
essential to increase voter turnout, but the party has been replaced by other
organizations when it comes to management of the campaign, advertising, and fund
raising.
The discussion of presidential coattails, midterm elections, and management
of national economy are closely related to each other. Campbell (1997) argues that the
party of the president always looses seats in midterm elections. The presidential
coattail effects, present in concomitant House and President elections, do not hold
until the midterm elections. But the loss of impetus of the President’s party is also a
consequence of the retrospective vote predominant in midterm elections. Voters tend
to evaluate incumbent Representatives based on how well the President is doing in the
management of the economy (Campbell 1997, Erikson 1988). If the party of the
President is well evaluated, then the losses are minimal; if it is not, then the results for
incumbents belonging to the President’s party might be disappointing for them.
Finally, none of the national level factors are explored in previous studies of
reelection in open-list proportional representation. This is the final gap that the
present study attempts to fill.
Variables and Hypotheses
Two major sets of variables will be tested in this study. Variables related to
local issues include the vote distribution of candidates, level of domination and
competition inside of the main electoral base, campaign expenditures, the
characteristics of the municipality, the influence of pork barrel and credit claiming,
and the patterns of coalition with regional and local political actors. The national
variables include the participation of the incumbent in the legislative arena, the
hierarchical status of the Deputy in the Chamber, the personal characteristics of the
Deputy, party identification, and finally the effect of the President’s influence on
legislative elections.
Local Variables
The first two variables to be analyzed are the effect of the spatial distribution
of incumbents’ vote in the outcomes of elections of 1994 and 1998 as well as the level
of competition inside the most important electoral base of each legislator who intends
to run for reelection. It is assumed in our model that the information provided by the
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result of the previous election (1994), regarding the level of concentration/dispersion
of votes, constrains the legislator’s actions and performance. Thus, for instance, it is
expected that those incumbents who highly concentrated those votes in a municipality
will be very concerned with answering his/her municipality’s demands in order to
maximize his/her future electoral returns.
It is also assumed that the way incumbents strategically performed their
mandates will have a direct impact in their electoral results during the next election
(1998). In order words, if incumbents pay too much attention on local issues and
demands they have higher probability of presenting higher concentration of votes in
1998’s election. In one word, the incumbents’ electoral profile in terms of
concentration/dispersion of votes is understood as a consequence of the way they
strategically perform their mandates.7
Therefore, the model intends to answer the following questions: Do in fact
deputies that dominate their most important municipalities – those that most
contribute to his/her final vote - have a greater likelihood of getting reelected? On the
other hand, do those that disperse their votes throughout the state also increase their
chances?
In order to answer these questions four variables where devised. DOMINAC
represents the level of domination of the candidate over his most important
municipality. Precisely, it means the amount of votes that each individual candidate
obtained inside of his/her most important electoral base (the municipality where
he/she got most votes) divided by the amount of available voters in this municipality
during the election of 1998. The expectation is that higher levels of domination should
have a positive effect on the likelihood of reelection.
The model also incorporates variables, which measure the level of
dispersion/concentration of votes in both election of 1994 and 1998. In other words,
these variables (ELCONC94 and ELCONC98) represent the sum of votes obtained in
the municipality where the individual candidate got most votes divided by the total
amount of votes that she/he got in the whole state (electoral district). Thus, these
variables try to estimate to what extent strategies of concentration/dispersion of votes
can help candidates to be elected. The hypothesis is that those who concentrate their
7
We also recognize that besides considering the strategic choice of how to perform their mandates, it is
important to take into account the strategic choice of their concurrent.
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vote are more vulnerable because they don’t have enough resources to gather votes
throughout the state. Those who disperse their votes should get reelected more easily.
Our model also takes into account a measure of local concurrence or dispute
for votes. Thus, the variable DIFPOND represents the difference between the sum of
votes obtained by the individual candidate where he/she got most votes and the total
of votes of the candidate most voted in such municipality. So, if the sign of this
difference is positive it means that this specific candidate was the most voted and
negative otherwise. It implies that this candidate faces less concurrence than those
whose electoral difference was negative and, as a consequence, she/he is less
vulnerable in his/her most important electoral base. We also considered the size of
this municipality by dividing this difference by the total number of voters available. It
is expected that individual candidates with less electoral dispute or concurrence inside
of the municipality that he/she obtained most votes will present higher probability of
reelection.
The second local factor that might influence election outcomes is campaign
expenditures in 1994 and 1998 elections. The variables EXPEND94 and EXPEND98
are the total declared expenditures to electoral Court of candidates in both elections.
According to Samuels (2000), reelected candidates spend more than those who lose,
indicating that money buys votes in Brazil, which does not seem to be exactly the case
in the US (Jacobson 1990). Samuels bases his conclusion on a simple measure of
central tendency, without considering the dispersion of the variable. However, as will
be discussed in more detail ahead, the standard deviation of this variable, for both
successful and unsuccessful incumbents, is higher than the mean. This is a clear
indication that the mean is not an appropriate indicator to test the relevance of
campaign expenditures. Based on this, our hypothesis is that campaign expenditures
will have limited, if any, effect in increasing reelection.
The characteristics of the municipality that is the main electoral stronghold of
the incumbent, where he/she gets most votes, is the third local factor that might affect
elections. The purpose here is to use the characteristics of the municipality, similar to
what did Ames (1995), as an indicator of the vulnerability of the incumbent.
SAMEBASE is a dummy variable indicating if the incumbent maintained the same
municipality as his most important bailiwick in two consecutive elections, 1994 and
1998. Maintaining the same municipality as electoral stronghold is an indication that
the incumbent has a certain level of control over the voters of that locality. It is an
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indication of stability and impermeability of the locality to challengers. Our
hypothesis is that the likelihood of getting reelected is increased when the incumbent
safeguards his main electoral stronghold against challengers.
The classical hypothesis about pork barrel will also be tested. Do distributive
policies that disburse public funds to specific localities affect the outcome of
elections? Four variables where tested to answer this question. Two crosscutting axles
distinguish these variables. The first one refers to the distinction between credit
claiming - indicated by the number of budgetary amendments presented by individual
legislators and approved by Congress but not necessarily executed by the executive –
and the disbursement of money – indicated by the proportion of the total amount of
funds stipulated by the amendment actually disbursed by the Executive branch. The
second axis is related to the geographic specification of the amendment. The
difference here is between amendments presented to the main bailiwick of the
incumbent in comparison to those presented benefiting the entire district (in the case
of Brazil, the whole state). NAMENDS and PORK refer to policies that benefit
specific localities. The former indicates the number of individual amendments
approved but not necessarily executed benefiting the main electoral stronghold of the
incumbent. The latter is an indicator of the share of the total value of all amendments
presented benefiting the specific locality that where in fact paid by the executive. The
first is a test of credit claiming, the second taps the efficiency of the incumbent in
sending pork to his bailiwick. That is, deliver money. Both cover the years from 1996
to 19988. Our hypothesis in relation to these variables is that while the actual money
in fact delivered affects positively, just claiming credit (approve but not execute)
affects negatively the likelihood of getting reelected.
Similar variables where developed to represent credit claiming and pork barrel
at the level of the state (the whole electoral district). TOTALAMEND indicates the
total number of amendments benefiting the entire district presented in the period
between the elections, 1996 to 1998. MEANBUD represents the mean execution of
amendments in the period from 1996 to 1998. This hypothesis is similar to the above
one. The difference is that we expect the execution of amendments to be more
effective when focusing on the main electoral stronghold of the incumbent.
8
In 1994 and 1995, especially due to delays on the voting of the Annual Budgetary Law and to
scandals of corruption in the Budgetary Committee, almost no amendments where approved or
executed.
16
Finally, the fifth local politics hypothesis regards the influence of regional and
local political actors, who hold political resources such as public funds and jobs, in
the elections for the Chamber of Deputies. Recently, a few authors have dedicated
special attention to the patterns of coalition building established between state
governors (Abrucio 1998, Abrucio e Samuels 1997, Pereira 2000) and municipal
mayors (Renno 1998) with Federal Deputies. The common point between these
authors is the recognition of the central role played by the necessity of mutual support
and interdependence between these political actors in order to increase their
individual chances of surviving politically. To verify if such support does in fact
influence legislative elections, a set of dummy variables was created. MAYOR96
indicates if the incumbent Federal Deputy is from the same coalition as that of the
mayor from his main electoral stronghold. The same logic was applied to represent if
the incumbent is in the same coalition as the governor of the state (GOV94) and with
the candidate for governor in the 1998 elections (GOV98). Our hypothesis is that both
MAYOR96 and GOV94 should have a positive impact in the chances of reelection for
the Chamber because these officeholders can use the resources of the office to help
their coalition partner get reelected. It is in the interest of these local and regional
political actors because they will probably receive more support, in the form of pork
projects for instance, from the elected Deputy. The support of the candidate for
governor in the 1998 elections will only have an impact if this candidate has a good
chance of winning. If not, his support might actually cause problems for the
incumbent.
National Variables
Four hypotheses about the effects of national political issues and dynamics on
legislative elections will be tested. The first one refers to the participation of the
incumbent inside Congress. This is a form of verifying if activities as legislator have
an impact on the outcome of elections. PROJECTS indicates the number of projects
presented by the Deputy in his/her legislative career. The absence of the deputy in the
Chamber, measured by the number of times he/she did not participate in roll call votes
(ABSENCE) is an indication of how assiduous the incumbent is in participating in
Congress’ decisions. Both variables are indications of how much effort and time the
Deputy devotes to his legislative role. The hypothesis in this case is that active
incumbents will increase their electoral viability.
17
Other indications of how active the incumbent is are represented by his formal
and informal hierarchical status in the Chamber. By formal status we mean the
positions the Deputy holds inside the hierarchy of the Chamber. In this way, those
who are members of the Directing Table (Mesa Diretora) were classified according to
their positions. The variable COMMIS differentiates between deputies that hold
position followed by third vice-president, second vice-president, first vice-president,
and president of the Directing Table. With the same logic the position of the Deputy
in permanent committees (COMPER) and special committees (COMSPE) were also
classified. The informal status of the incumbent was assessed using lists of most
influential deputies in the Chamber (LEADER). If the incumbent is a member of the
list, he received a positive category, if not he is represented by the absence of the trait.
Similarly to the previous hypothesis, we expect that those candidates for reelection
who hold a leadership positions and as a consequence are more visible will have
higher rates of reelection.
The next hypothesis is related to the personal characteristics of the incumbent.
SENIOR indicates the number of terms that the individual legislator has in the
Chamber previous to the 1998 elections. HISTORY shows the number of elected
offices held by the incumbent before becoming a Deputy. This is a proxy for his
experience with elections and electoral positions. The expectation is that both
SENIOR and HISTORY should have a positive effect in the likelihood of reelection.
We also have included a set of dummy variables, which represents the previous
patterns of political careers of incumbents who decided to run for reelection. Thus
BUREAUC means if the candidate had occupied a bureaucratic position before of this
specific electoral mandate as a Deputy. BUSINESS symbolizes if the incumbent is or
was a businessmen. HISTLEG represents if the individual incumbent has previous
legislative mandate and HISTEXEC represents if he/she has occupied previous
bureaucratic positions either in the state or federal spheres. Although we have no
particular prediction for those variables, we think that it can be worth to test the effect
of them.
The role of political parties is the core of the next hypothesis. Parties in Brazil
are seen as playing a very limited role in the electoral arena (Ames 1995). 9 However,
9
By saying that the Brazilian political parties play a weak role we mean just in the electoral arena and
not inside the Congress. Limongi and Figueiredo have plenty demonstrated that the political parties in
Brazil work in a very cohesively way following their party leaders.
18
it could be that even though parties do not directly influence electoral campaigns they
might signal some information to the electorate. In this way, parties from the right and
from center might benefit by receiving the support of the President and hence might
increase the likelihood of reelection of its members. Hence, members of right and
center parties have greater chances of getting reelected.
Another variable related to the role of parties as sources of information is the
amount of party switching by an incumbent. Since electoral rules do not punish party
switching and the parties are not the owners of the mandates; changes of parties have
become a quite widespread practice in Brazil. NCHANGES indicates the number of
times an incumbent switched parties from 1995 to 1998. The number of times an
incumbent changed parties should reflect badly on his/her record. The hypothesis is
that the number of party switches should have a negative impact in the chances of
reelection.
Finally, some variables referring to the relation between incumbent and
President will be tested. The role of the President in legislative elections will be
measured in two ways. First, the voting record of the deputy is classified by how
strongly he supported the President’s proposals in the house (INDEX).10 Since the
Executive branch is the author of 80% of the proposals in examination in Congress
during this period of research, this index is also a surrogate for the participation of the
incumbent in Congress. However, this participation is defined by his ideological
positioning. The point being that those who support the president more often, and
therefore have a higher INDEX, will be reelected.
Other three variables, similar to the ones regarding local and regional level
political actors, were also tested. Dummy variables representing if the incumbent was
from the coalition that supported the President (COALIT), if he entered the coalition
(ENTERCOAL), and if he exited the coalition (EXITCOAL) were also entered in the
model. We expect that those who always were from the coalition and those who
entered the coalition to receive positive coefficients, those that exited the coalition,
should get a negative coefficient. The incumbents who abandoned the President
should get punished for it by not receiving or having greater difficulty in receiving
money for the pork barrel projects; thus these individuals should be especially
affected in a negative way. Moreover, the last two variables also qualify the kind of
10
See Pereira and Mueller (2000) for the calculation of the index.
19
party switching made by incumbents. Recall that NCHANGES indicates the number
of party changes of an incumbent in the period between 1994 and 1998, but it does
not specify the direction. ENTERCOA and EXITCOA, on the other hand, define the
direction of the change, if to the opposition or to the government.
Data and Analysis
In order to avoid selection bias we included in our sample all class of
incumbents’ decisions regarding the election of 1998.11 More specifically, of the 615
representatives in our sample (including effectives, substitutes,12 and those elected
deputies in 1994 who decided to occupy a bureaucratic position in the executive but
run for reelection in 1998), 78 (12.68%) decided to retire from elected positions; 15
(2.43%) came to a decision to run for state deputies; 07 (1.13%) resolved to run for
the senate; 16 (2.60%) were candidate do state governor; and 446 (72.52%) decided to
run for reelection in 1998, of which 288 (64.57%) won and 158 (35.42%) failed to do
so.13 This is an indication that reelection, in opposition to Samuels’ argument, is an
important phenomenon in the Brazilian political system that deserves to be better
studied.
Therefore, we have decided to rum a multinomial logit with the following
description of our dependent variable: 0 retired legislators; 1 run for state deputy; 2
run for governor and senate; 3 run for reelection but not reelected, and 4 run for
reelection and successfully reelected. However, it is decisive to note that we do not
intend to investigate the reasons, which can justify the decision for not running for
reelection, or to run for other elected positions. Precisely, we have in mind just to
estimate through this econometric procedure what are the possible differences among
11
We could have sampled just the incumbents who effectively had run for reelection and thus to
estimate the effect of independent variables on the success or failure of reelection. However, if we had
done so we would be biasing our sample by not including for instance the legislators who had decided
not run for reelection. We are grateful to Fernando Limongi and José A. Cheibub for calling our
attention to this possible mistake.
12
The sample includes both substitute and main office holders. For every elected Deputy, there is in
Brazil a substitute deputy also elected. Some of these exercise tenure for distinct periods of time
because it is very common that elected Deputies are given jobs on the Federal and State bureaucracies.
13
It is also important to say that we took out of our sample 53 legislators who did not run for reelection
to federal deputy in 1998: 33 deputies who were elected mayors in 1996 and 2 who were elected local
representatives (Vereador) in the same election; 8 deputies from the Distrito Federal who we had no
available information regarding their vote distribution and their main electoral base; 2 deputies who
were appointed to the Federal Accounting Court; 5 deputies that were expelled out of the Chamber; and
finally 3 deputies who died.
20
those groups concerning the impact of their performance and legislative behavior in
their career decisions.
However, before the econometric tests we have applied a test of hypothesis
about the means using just the two groups of incumbents who had decided to run for
reelection in order to determine if those means are, in fact, statistically significant and,
as a consequence, to orient the construction of the multivariate model.14 This test can
answer to what level the means of the two groups (reelected and not reelected) are
statistically different (alternative hypothesis), and as a consequence, we can reject the
null hypothesis that they are the same. It is likely that those variables that do not
survive to the test of means would not have impact in the multivariate model.
Consequently, the test of difference in the means provides important information
about how each variable might behave in the multivariate test.
[Table 1 and 2 here]
As you can see in the Table 1, almost all the local variables survived the test
of difference in means. This shows that the group of reelected incumbents in fact is
different from the ones who did not succeed when considering local level aspects.
One variable that deserves to be highlighted is campaign expenditures in 1998.15 The
means of elected and defeated incumbents is different; the first group’s average is
greater than the second. However this difference is not as striking as in other variables
because the size of the standard deviations is bigger than that of the averages. This
clearly shows that the dispersion around the mean is enormous for both groups and
that the mean is probably a consequence of outliers that spend much more than the
average. In fact, the median, a measure not so sensible to outliers, of this variable for
both groups is much smaller than the mean. This also indicates that most incumbents
spend less than the average amount.
14
We have taken the mean and the standard deviation of the two groups of legislators (reelected and
not reelected) with regard to all the explanatory groups of variables (Local and National) that take part
of the model. We have used the statistic test “Z” to X1 - X2. Z = (X1 - X2) – (1 - 2) /  x1 - x2. For this
test we have used the following levels of statistical confidence: 2.72 = 1% ***, 2.04 = 5% ** e 1.67 =
10% *.
15
The results of the descriptive test of EXPEND98 are in the appendix (see Tables 8 and 9). This
variable was not included in the multivariate model because of its high level of missing values.
Declaration of campaign donations was first required by law in the 1994 elections, but due to peculiar
problems in some states, Rio de Janeiro and Piaui, not all elected Deputies presented their list of
campaign donations. To avoid possible biases caused by the missing values, we chose to not limit our
analysis of campaign expenditure to the test of difference in means.
21
Another problem with this variable is the number of missing cases and the
biases introduced by them. There is information available for 98% of the reelected
incumbents and for 82% of those who were not reelected. Any inference based on this
data is not free of bias.16 Based on the high dispersion around the mean and on the
overrepresentation of elected incumbents, we suspect that in a more accurate dataset,
campaign expenditures would not probably differentiate winners from losers.17
The test of means also reveled that to take part of the governor’s party
coalition both in 1994 and 1998 does not help in terms of reelection. In other words,
the difference of means of the two groups (reelected and not reelected) was not
statistically significant with those variables (See Table 1). This result raises doubts
about the Samuels’ argument (2000) that defends the existence of gubernatorial
coattails effect in Brazil. It also weakens the line of reasoning that states a great
influence of federalism upon legislative election (Abrucio, 1998). A similar statement
can be raised regarding to keep the same electoral base as 1994 as 1998’s elections for
legislative positions. This variable was not statistically significant with the test of
means questioning thus if keeping a safe bailiwick is a good strategy to be reelected
since the amount of legislators who kept the same electoral base are almost the same
in both groups of legislators reelected and not reelected.
Concerning the group of national variables, the test of hypothesis about the
means shows a different outcome. The majority of the national variables were not
statistically different suggesting their little capacity of explaining the process of
reelection in Brazil (See Table 2). This result is a good indication that the Brazilian
voters care less about the national behavior of their representatives as a parameter of
guiding their decision of voting for federal representatives. In other words, it brings to
mind the low level of accountability provided by the Brazilian electoral system. And
what concern us even more are the low institutional incentives oriented to an effective
participation of legislators in the national issues and sphere.
It is important to recognize however that the difference in the means of some
of national variables was statistically significant confirming thus some of our
hypothesis. Among them, to be considered a chef leader of the Chamber of Deputy
increases the chances of being reelected. Another interesting finding was to note that
16
Previous studies have based their conclusions on even worse data (Samuels 2000). The Tribunal
Superior Eleitoral (Federal Electoral Court) data available until recently included only 37% of
incumbents who lost the election and 82% of those who won.
22
to have a previous executive position either in the federal or in the state bureaucracy
provides better conditions to be reelected. The result of the test of means also shows
that the legislators who decided to exit from the presidential coalition present “Z”
value statistically significant and negative. That is, the decision of leaving the
parliamentary base of presidential support did not bring electoral returns. Finally, the
difference of means of the variables “to occupy the main hierarchical positions inside
Permanent and Special Committees” in Chamber of Deputies were also statistically
different suggesting that those positions by providing greater public exposition
increases the chances of reelection.
The next step is to verify how these variables perform in a multivariate model.
Once again, this was done using multinomial logistic regression with the following
description of our dependent variable: 0 if the individual incumbent choose to retire
from elected positions; 1 if he/she run for state deputy; 2 if he/she run for governor
and senate18; 3 if the incumbent candidate run for reelection but without success, and
finally 4 if he/she decided to run for reelection and was in fact reelected.19
In addition to the multinomial regression, mainly oriented to avoid selection
bias, we also run a more parsimonious model as in terms of our dependent variable (0
if the individual incumbent run for reelection but was not reelected and 1 if he/she
was in fact successfully reelected), as in terms of our explanatory variables (we took
into account just the variables which were statistically significant in our previous
tests). This procedure intended to estimate the variables that were capable of
explaining the main question of this research; that is, what are the variables that
differentiate successful incumbents from unsuccessful ones in the 1998 elections for
the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies?
A logistic regression also allows the comparison between incumbents at the
national level, including in a single analysis representatives from distinct districts. It is
exactly this characteristic of our research design that allows for the test of the national
level variables, which is not the case of Ames’ (1995) study where only local level
variables could be assessed. The goal here is to evaluate first how much of the
variation in the dependent variable is explained by the overall model, then to check
17
We would like to thank Jairo Nicolau for calling our attention to this issue.
We attributed the same value to run for State Governor and run for Senate because both of these
positions are organized by majority rule and can be considered as a progressive ambition.
18
23
which variables surpassed the test of null hypothesis, and finally to check if the
impact of the variable is in the expected direction.20
The following two tables represent a kind of resume of the multinomial logit
test including just the combination of the variables that were in fact statistically
significant.21 As the multinomial logit has more than two possible dependent variables
(in our case five), the test runs separately each dependent variable related to the bunch
mark, which is in our first regression the legislators who decided to retire from elected
positions in 1998 (Table 3), and in our second regression, the legislators who
successfully run for reelection in the same year (Table 4).
[Tables 3 and 4 here]
The first finding that deserves to be highlighted from the econometric test is
related to the variable ELCON94. This variable is clearly important in the legislators’
choice between to retire and to dispute elected posts. Precisely, the coefficient of this
variable was positive and statistically significant in all groups of legislator’s decision
related to not dispute elected positions in 1998, what we are calling here retired (see
Table 3). If, on the one hand, legislators who highly concentrated their distributions of
votes during the previous election of 1994 presented a higher probability of running
for elected positions in 1998; on the other, those who had a disperse distribution of
votes in 1994 and, as a consequence, did not have a fix electoral base, preferred to
retire from electoral disputes in 1998.
The incumbents who opted for running to State Deputy also made a decision
to enter into the presidential coalition during their mandates (ENTERCOA was
positive and statistically significant). We can interpret this kind of political choice of
moving to presidential coalition as a desperate act since it is possible to understand
the decision of a federal deputy to run for state deputy as “regressive ambition” in
19
The multinomial regression was run twice since we were interested to consider all possible
combinations of dependent variables. While in the first regression our bench mark was retired
legislators, in the second it was run for reelection with success.
20
Since there is a strong correlation between COALIT, ENTERCOA, EXITCOA, and NCHANGES
we opted to exclude some variables from the analysis. An indication of collinearity in a full model is
the unexpected signs in COALIT, ENTERCOA, and NCHANGES when all are entered simultaneously
in the equation. In fact when entered separately in the equation, COALIT gains a positive sign and
NCHANGES a negative one, as theoretically expected albeit not statistically significant, whereas when
entered simultaneously both get reversed signs. Since neither was significant, we opted for removing
both to avoid issues of collinearity.
21
All econometric regressions can be requested.
24
their political career.22 This interpretation gets stronger when the decision of running
to State Deputy is related to the choice of running for reelection with success (see
fourth column of Table 4 when the benchmark is reelection with success). In this
situation the variable ENTERCOA continues to be statistically significant and
positive. That means, more than belong to presidential coalition, the decision of
running for State Deputy is influenced by the signaling to voters that they move into
presidential realm.
As it was anticipated and can be seen in the fourth column of the Table 3, the
majority of incumbents who decide to run for Senate and for State Governor are not
from the same political coalition of the current State Governor and of the elected
Senator in 1998 related to the retired deputies (our benchmark). The coefficients of
both variables are negative and statistically significant. This can be justified by the
simple lack of political space since they are disputing the same political job. More
interesting finding regarding this choice of political career (a kind of progressive
ambition in opposite of the previous one) is to note that the variables MEANBUD and
LEADER were statistically significant and positive in the multinomial test. This
implies that to deliver money in their states in terms of execution of individual
amendments from 1995 to 1998, as well as to be considered a leader inside the
Congress,23 matter in their decision of running to State Governor and to Senate related
to do not dispute elected posts.
Concerning the choice of running for reelection, the econometric test revealed
fascinating findings. While the variable to vote favorable for presidential positions
inside Congress was statistically significant and positive to the legislators that were
not reelected, it was not significant to legislators successfully reelected. This result
suggests that, in the opposite direction of our expectation, to vote for a popular
president at that time does not matter in terms of reelection. It maters in the decision
of run for reelection, but not in the success of the race24 However, both groups of
22
It is also feasible to interpret this behavior as a kind of delusion with the national activity of
legislating. As the decision-making process is very centralized by party leaders inside the Brazilian
Congress, several legislators do no fit or do not feel comfortable in just being a “support actor.” So, it
not unusual to see some legislators who did not engage in a leader position during their mandates prefer
to dispute legislative state level positions or even to run for executive posts such as mayors or State
Governors.
23
Actually, those variables are complementary since the leaders are supposed to have more access to
the money to be delivered in their States.
24
We should be cautious with this affirmation because both dependent variables (not reelected and
reelected) are running related to our benchmark (retired). When the dependent variable run for
25
legislators that tried to be reelected in 1998 care about approving individual
amendments oriented to benefit their states. That is, the variable TOTALAMEND
was statistically significant and positive.
In addition to approve individual amendments, the legislators who succeed in
being reelected besides approving the amendments were also concerned about execute
those amendments. In other words, the variable MEANBUD (deliver money in their
state through the execution of their individual amendments) was statistically
significant and positive confirming thus our hypothesis. However, the variable
MEANBUD was not statistically significant in the group of legislators who failure to
be reelected once again bearing the hypothesis that it is not enough to approve. It must
be delivered in order to accomplish success.
The Table 3 also shows that we can find a shorter number of legislators
located at the Center in the ideological spectrum in the Chamber of Deputies in the
group that failure to be reelected since the coefficient of the variable CENTER98 was
negative. Finally, to be a party leader (PARTYPOS) and to occupy hierarchical
position inside permanent committees in the Chamber of Deputies (COMPER) were
important variables that explain the success of reelection related to the choice of
retiring from elected posts, suggesting thus that some legislative activities do offer
incentives for legislators to keep their “static ambition.”
Another worthy of note comment comparing tables 3 and 4 is related to the
choices of retiring from elected positions and successfully reelected and vice-versa.
The multinomial logit test shows that the same variables were statistically significant.
In addition, the coefficients and p-values of those variables are exactly the same with
the unique difference in the directions of the coefficients’ signs. While in the table 3
all the variables’ coefficients were positive, they were negative in the table 4. This
finding just confirms that incumbents who did not concentrated their distribution of
votes during the 1994’s election; who less approved and executed their individual
amendments in the annual budget; who did not engage in party leader positions; and
finally, who did not occupy hierarchical position inside permanent committees, decide
do not run for elected positions in 1998’s elections.
When the preference of running for other elected positions (state deputy,
senate, and state governor) is related to the option of running for reelection with
reelection without success is related to run successfully for reelection (see last column of Table 4) the
variable INDEX (vote for president) loses its capacity of explaining the failure of reelection.
26
success (benchmark), the variable HISTEXE (has been taken up a previous position in
the executive) matters positively in their decision. In other words, those legislators
with a past inside bureaucratic posts, either in federal or state branches, present a
higher probability to run for state level bodies. We can also imply that some of these
incumbents decide to run for other elected position because they get unsatisfied with
national activities inside the Congress and they believe they would better listen their
local demands if they work in the sate sphere or in the state executive. Remember that
the decision-making process in the Brazilian Congress is over centralized in the hands
of the party leaders and the executive. So, if those incumbents are “common
legislators” (baixo clero) who do not exert a national leadership, they progressively
lose interests in the national legislative activities.
The variable TOTALAMEND is also key for understanding the legislators’
decision to running for state deputy. This variable was statistically significant and
negative when it was tested related to run for reelection with success, which means
that those who are not able to even approve individual amendments have no
conditions to keep their current job. So, what only remains to them is to try a strategy
of regressive ambition.
The decision of running for state deputy, for state governor, and for senator is
furthermore influenced by the low standard of supporting presidential initiatives. The
variable INDEX was statistically significant and negative in both progressive and
regressive career choices. That is, those who choose to run for those elected positions
present a low level of presidential support inside Congress. Therefore, it is possible to
infer that the legislator’s behavior of voting for or against the president’s interests is
not important to define the success of legislators, but, according to the result of the
test, it is crucial in the decision of how to dispute, especially when it is compared with
the choice of running for reelection.
This apparently surprising outcome can be understood by the perception that
incumbents that are running for state level posts are even more concerned with local
issues because they are more constrained by their local constituencies. As Pereira
(2000) has already demonstrated, there is a trade-off between support presidential
initiatives and not achieve to deliver pork barrel policies. Once the individual
incumbent votes more frequently for the president, it is easier to deliver money
through the execution of his/her amendments, what can bring votes for reelection.
However, it is important to precise that what matters for the legislators’ constituencies
27
is the execution of policies that can benefit them (MEANBUD) and not how
legislators behave in terms of their votes to have access to pork barrel, since the
variables INDEX was not statistically significant in the cases when legislators decide
to run for reelection with or without success.
To be a leader inside Congress definitively facilitates the choice of running for
state governor and for the senate as well as for the legislators who succeed in run for
reelection. The test also shows that if the incumbent has not been a leader and decides
to run for reelection it decreases the chances of reelection since this variable was
statistically significant and negative. If the incumbent belongs to a political party
located at the center of the ideological spectrum it decreases their chances of running
for state governor and senate.
Now, we are ready to analyze the core of this paper; that is, the determinants
of the reelection in Brazil. To do such thing, we must look more carefully to the last
column of table 4 and at last we will analyze the result of the simple logit regression
between reelected and not reelected. As can be seen, the variables that are able of
explaining the failure in the reelection related to the success (our benchmark) are the
following:
1)
ELCON94; the deputies who failure in their strategies of getting
reelected tended to present a high concentration of the distribution
of their votes in the election race of 1994. It means that to disperse
votes all over the state appears to be a very good strategy for being
reelected;
2)
MEANBUD; the result of this variable, as we explained before,
appoints to the fact that the less the legislators execute those
individual amendments in the annual budget, the lesser will be their
chances of been reelected. This conclusion is driven by the negative
sign of the variable’s coefficient. Once again, with the current
electoral design, to be successfully reelected the individual
incumbent cannot ignore the importance of delivering pork barrel
policies. It is a risk too high.
3)
LEADER; feel persons are considered a leader inside the Brazilian
Congress; to reach such a distinction means to have a considerable
amount of power; the table shows that it is clearly harder to be
reelected for those who have not been leader.
28
4)
EXITCOAL; the individual candidates for whatever reason decided
to exit from the presidential coalition present a higher probability of
failure in their attempt of being reelected; it is a sort of double
punishment from the executive and from the voters at the same
time; once the incumbent get out from the presidential coalition it is
likely that he/she would have less access to the distribution of
benefits controlled by the executive; what, as a consequence, makes
his/her constituency unhappy and unsatisfied.
With respect to the simple logit regression, we estimate all independent
variables that take part of our model, but the variables that represents the distribution
and domination. Our dependent variable is success reelected (1) and failure of
reelection (0). The result of the test is represented at the Table 5.
[Table 5 here]
The model predicts correctly 71.39% of the cases. This is an indication that
the electoral success of incumbents is beyond their control. Even though we attempt
to control for the levels of competition inside the districts, a lot of the effort of
deputies is contingent upon factors beyond his/her control. The variables that are
statistically significant and as a result can be confidently interpreted as being related
to reelection are NAMEND, PORK, HISTEXEC, MEANBUD, LEADER, and
EXITCOAL. Moreover, all of them vary in our expected direction.
Disbursing federal largess strongly support our predicted results. We were
correct when it was argued that what really matters is executing the amendments
approved and not just claiming credit for presenting amendments that benefit specific
localities. Claiming credit alone, without presenting the money, NAMEND, has a
negative impact in the incumbent’s chances of reelection. This is an indication that
“talk is cheap”; what really matters is the actual disbursement of funds. Likewise,
MEANBUD has the expected positive effect. In addition, the PORK was statistically
significant and positive demonstrating that to execute individual amendments in the
municipality where the candidate got most votes (main bailiwick) in the previous
election really matters in the success of reelection.
29
An interesting finding was to note that to have a past in executive positions,
either in federal or sate levels matters for the chance of being reelected. This variable
was statistically significant however with negative coefficient suggesting that it
decreases the chances of being reelected.
Finally EXITCOAL, to abandon the coalition of the President, and LEADER,
being in the list of most influential Congressmen, also have the expected effects.
Being disloyal to the executive branch harmed the incumbents. The likelihood of
getting reelected is diminished when one moved away from the Presidents coalition.
As was said earlier, this is an indication that only one kind of change in parties is
relevant to the electoral process; that is when one switches from a party in
government to one in the opposition. When an incumbent switches parties moving
into the opposition, hence losing to a great extent a precious bargaining instrument –
his/her vote in favor of the President – this seems to reflect poorly in his/her electoral
prospects.
On the other hand, being a leader in Congress offers certain visibility that is
recompensed during elections. Prominent figures in the Chamber have a greater
chance of getting reelected. Even though this is not exactly an indication of how
efficient the incumbent is and how strongly he supports the Executive, this variable
indicates that being prominent and respected in Congress leads to higher visibility and
to better electoral outcomes. This is also a possible indication that those who get more
attention from the media are also the ones who are set more accountable. The fact that
they get reelected more often indicates that saliency in the House has electoral
payoffs.
In order to assess the consistency of these results various distinct
configurations of the model were tested.25 A first finding is that there appears to be an
interaction between the patterns of vote concentration/distribution with the credit
claiming variables, TOTAMEND and NAMEND. The domination variable, in turn,
appears to affect the pork barrel variables, PORK and MEANBUD.
As can be seen in Table 6, when the variables which represent the vote
concentration/distribution in 1998’s election are included in the model, the pork barrel
variable and to approve but not necessarily to execute (NAMEND) lose their
statistical significance and as a consequence their capacity of explaining the reelection
25
The outputs of our various regression analyses are available upon request.
30
process. But, simultaneously, the variables ELCON98 and DIFPOND (the level of
competition in the main electoral municipality) become statistically significant and
negative coefficients. This indicates that the candidates who highly concentrate votes
and faced greater electoral disputes presenter a lower likelihood of reelection.
[Table 6 here]
A parsimonious model of reelection in Brazil is presented in Table 7. This
includes the variables that were statistically significant in the previous models with
the exception of the vote distribution variables. This was done first to avoid the strong
interaction effect between these variables with pork barrel and credit claiming
strategies. Second and most importantly, we have the strong belief that the vote
distribution variables might be endogenous to the model, and not exogenous.26 When
using vote distribution as a proxy to campaign strategies, we are using votes to
explain outcomes of elections. It may well be that the distribution of votes is beyond
the control of the incumbent, hence reflecting vulnerability and not conscientious
strategies. Therefore, the distribution of votes itself would require explanation.
[Table 7 here]
In any case, the variables presented below confirm the initial expectations of
this article and indicate that most hypotheses evaluated do not hold empirical
verification. What really seems to matter to increase the likelihood of electoral
success are disbursing federal largess, avoiding having the Executive power as an
enemy, and being a prominent figure in the Chamber.
26
We would like to thank Fernando Limongi and Bernardo Mueller for pointing out to us some of the
limitations of the vote distribution variables.
31
Conclusion
Several hypotheses about the determinants of reelection for the Chamber of
Deputies in 1998 were tested. The electoral strategies were distinguished between
those oriented towards the interest of the specific localities that incumbents perceive
as relevant for their electoral prospects, and those geared to national level issues. The
main conclusion is that both dynamics play a role in legislative elections. However in
regards to the formal resources made available to the incumbent by his/her office,
distribution of pork is more important than legislative efficiency and position taking.
Local interests prevail in the electoral arena, since the pressures of local demands
appear to have a stronger impact in electoral strategies.
It must be emphasized that none of the variables related to the participation of
the incumbent in the formulation of legislation as well as spending time in the
Chamber affect his/her likelihood of getting reelected. There is a clear dissociation
between what the deputies do in the Chamber, with the exception of what is directly
related to their bailiwicks, and the outcomes of elections. As was said before, the only
activity done by deputies that affect their likelihood of getting reelected is
guaranteeing that their amendments get funded. According to Richard Hall (1996),
Representatives in the US House participate in Congress more actively mainly when
this participation offers some benefit to their districts, because this leads to higher
electoral payoff. “Constituency influence operates not only on legislator’s revealed
preferences (roll calls) but on the intensities that they reveal in their decisions about
when and to what extent they will participate in particular matters” (Hall 1996, 58).
Evidence hereby provided show that this is also the case in Brazil.
Some implications for the discussion about accountability in open list
proportional representation can be drawn from our finding. If what deputies do inside
the Chamber regarding the way they vote and the time they spend doing their job as
legislators does not influence their chances of reelection, than they are quite free to do
as they please with their tenure. It seems that the only concern they might have is to
disburse federal largess, which is not necessarily pernicious if in fact the amendments
distributed increase the quality of life in the localities commended.
But these findings should be interpreted with caution. It is clear that a complex
model, one that allows for the assessment of indirect effects and intervening variables
is more appropriate for the definition of the relation between pork barrel strategies
and the variables representing the spatial distribution of the vote. Similarly, a closer
32
look at how the participation in the coalition that supports the government affects
incumbents’ ability of getting their budgetary amendments funded might also clarify
how certain actions inside the Chamber have an indirect effect in election outcomes.
As Pereira (2000) argues, the Brazilian electoral connection might as well be defined
by Deputies’ conditional support to the President’s legislative agenda in exchange for
the liberation of public funds that impact elections.
33
Appendix
MeanBud
Temendas
pork
Nemendas
Expend98
Expend94
Difpond
Dominac
SameBase
Gov94
Gov98
ElConc98
ElConc94
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of the Local Variables (Test of Means)
Not Reelected
Reelected
44.40 41.45 0.34 0.46 0.82 0.09 -0.03 96140.68 95379.63 3.57 0.27 26.48 28.77
35.56 32.98 0.41 0.50 0.80 0.12 0.02 114012.36 162956.29 2.80 0.34 29.51 35.91
SD
SD
Z
24.60 21.50 0.48 0.50 0.38 0.10 0.13 88038.66 124900.96 4.11 0.34 12.45 18.46
21.61 20.56 0.49 0.50 0.40 0.12 0.13 114775.08 172559.70 3.81 0.37 12.81 18.49
-3.79 -4.04 1.50 0.82 -0.71 3.00 3.96
1.84
4.75
-1.95 2.04 2.43 3.90
***
***
***
***
*
***
*
*
**
***
Conspe
Comper
Comis
Nchanges
ExitCoal
EnterCoa
Coalit94
Absence
Index
Leader
projects
histexec
histleg
Business
buroc
senior
historic
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics of the National Variables (Test of Means)
Not Reelected 0.60 1.89 0.51 0.31 1.06 0.35 0.10 0.10 0.77 0.23 0.69 0.11 0.05 0.42 0.18 0.71 0.44
Reelected
0.54 1.98 0.47 0.29 0.86 0.21 0.17 0.23 0.79 0.21 0.74 0.07 0.01 0.33 0.34 0.99 0.68
SD
SD
Z
0.49 1.38 0.50 0.46 1.42 0.68 0.38
0.50 1.24 0.50 0.46 1.19 0.47 0.52
-1.32 0.66 -0.87 -0.32 -1.49 -2.20 1.49
**
0.30 0.25 0.12 0.46 0.31 0.22 0.62 1.09 1.19 1.17
0.42 0.24 0.11 0.44 0.26 0.10 0.68 1.63 1.46 1.39
3.83 0.83 -1.51 1.08 -1.18 -2.18 -1.37 1.22 2.20 1.92
***
**
**
*
34
Run/Reelected (4)
-1.5947
-2.4476
-2.2112
ElConc94 ElConc94 ElConc94
0.2593
0.2285
0.317
0.0917*
0.0918* 0.0001***
EnterCoa GovExerc
Index
3.069
-1.1412
1.8039
0.0108**
0.0634
0.0321**
Sen98 Totalamend
-1.3211
0.3727
0.0608** 0.0077***
MeanBud Center98
0.4456
-1.1124
0.0087*** 0.0742*
Leader
1.6077
0.0231**
-1.1563
ElConc94
0.1914
0.0129**
MeanBud
0.2122
0.028**
Totalamend
0.3605
0.0051***
PartyPos
0.6354
0.0626*
ComPer
0.2652
0.0429**
State Deputy (1)
Run/Not Elected (3)
Governor/Senate (2)
Table 3: Resume of the Multinomial Logit Regression of Political Career
Decisions - Benchmark: Retired (0)
Retired (0)
Constant
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Constant
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
Run/Reelected (0) P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
Variable
Coefficient
P Value
1.1563
-0.4383
-1.2912
ElConc94 HistExec HistExec
-0.1914
0.8633
0.7785
0.0129
0.0166**
0.0588*
MeanBud
Index
Index
-0.2122
-2.4699
-3.4304
0.028**
0.0953*
0.0244**
Totalamend Totalamend Leader
-0.3605
-0.5546
1.2165
0.0051*** 0.0471**
0.043**
PartyPos
EnterCoal Center98
-0.6354
2.2627
-1.1124
0.0626
0.0197**
0.0742*
ComPer
-0.2652
0.0429**
Run/Not Elected (4)
Governor/Senate (3)
State Deputy (2)
Retired (1)
Table 4: Resume of the Multinomial Logit Regression of Political Career
Decisions - Benchmark: Run/Reelected (0)
-1.0548
ElConc94
0.1256
0.0194**
MeanBud
-0.1383
0.0528*
Leader
-0.7753
0.029**
ExitCoal
1.5616
0.0415**
35
Table 5: Logit Regression of the Determinants of Reelection
Note: Not including the distribution of votes
Variable | Coefficient | Standard Error |b/St.Er.|P[|Z|>z] | Mean of X
Characteristics in numerator of Prob[Y = 1]
Constant .5271023520
.62895158
.838
.4020
MESBASE -.1470531701
.28542476
-.515
.6064 .80000000
NAMENDS -.6773389003E-01 .29306723E-01
-2.311
.0208 3.1279070
PORK
.6739450100
.35552964
1.896
.0580 .32606744
GOVEXERC -.1760445429
.24258971
-.726
.4680 .47441860
GOV98
.2613754400
.27211073
.961
.3368 .38372093
SEN98
.1668815524
.26468260
.630
.5284 .39302326
HISTLEG -.1324673047
.85547584E-01
-1.548
.1215 .93953488
HISTEXEC -.3858392382
.20072789
-1.922
.0546 .26279070
SENIOR
-.2939219873E-01 .93316303E-01
-.315
.7528 1.9372093
BUROC
-.3402701712
.23552294
-1.445
.1485 .47209302
EMPR
-.1901135204
.28981620
-.656
.5118 .29767442
SINDTRAB -.6213141064E-01 .28751387
-.216
.8289 .23255814
SINDPATR .1907716879
.37652354
.507
.6124 .13953488
INDICE
-.6445205690
.65987149
-.977
.3287 .78989416
PFAL
-1.101397073
1.0849972
-1.015
.3101 .21571830
PROJETOS .1138531370
.26666794
.427
.6694 .14651163
MEANBUD
.1735547553E-01 .76561190E-02
2.267
.0234 34.473721
TEMENDAS .3857277205E-02 .10419175E-01
.370
.7112 29.186047
NCHANGES -.4972764833E-01 .19464693
-.255
.7984 .36744186
LEADER
.8034112444
.36235387
2.217
.0266 .17906977
ENTERCOA -.2105912924
.44168638
-.477
.6335 .88372093E-01
EXITCOAL -1.359637255
.78293154
-1.737
.0825 .25581395E-01
PARTYPOS .2273018601
.21626608
1.051
.2932 .32558140
POSCON
.7274121993E-01 .84616365E-01
.860
.3900 .28604651
POSITIP1 .9652396481E-01 .88024796E-01
1.097
.2728 .90930233
POSITIE1 .5075758600E-01 .92717429E-01
.547
.5841 .60697674
CENTER98 .5554687311
.46697792
1.189
.2342 .38139535
RIGHT98
.5032297022
.48976454
1.027
.3042 .43488372
Percentage of Prediction: 71.39%
Log likelihood: -248.8027
Number of Observations: 430
36
Table 6: Logit Regression of the Determinants of Reelection
Note: Including the distribution of votes
Variable |Coefficient |Standard Error |b/St.Er.|P[|Z|>z] | Mean of X
Characteristics in numerator of Prob[Y = 1]
Constant 1.408778407
.80289025
1.755
.0793
ELCONC98 -.1238143151E-01 .69085171E-02
-1.792
.0731 36.095286
DOMINAC -1.290307262
1.8321835
-.704
.4813 .11280194
DIFPOND
4.096124574
1.5757673
2.599
.0093 .44263635E-02
MESBASE -.1546703891
.29118678
-.531
.5953 .80000000
EMENDAS -.4195431935E-01 .32798051E-01
-1.279
.2008 3.1279070
PORK
.4636064651
.37285621
1.243
.2137 .32606744
GOVEXERC -.2910587843
.25278724
-1.151
.2496 .47441860
GOV98
.3090411526
.28112949
1.099
.2716 .38372093
SEN98
.1004332402
.27023387
.372
.7102 .39302326
HISTLEG -.1091938371
.88902343E-01
-1.228
.2194 .93953488
HISTEXEC -.3436900786
.21293391
-1.614
.1065 .26279070
SENIOR
-.4147058925E-01 .94266366E-01
-.440
.6600 1.9372093
BUROC
-.3260480974
.24149297
-1.350
.1770 .47209302
EMPR
-.2985873638
.29844506
-1.000
.3171 .29767442
SINDTRAB -.5958649197E-01 .29505230
-.202
.8400 .23255814
SINDPATR .3387187250
.39213707
.864
.3877 .13953488
INDICE
-.7367121502
.67866317
-1.086
.2777 .78989416
PFAL
-.6761910294
1.1196563
-.604
.5459 .21571830
PROJETOS .1598117355
.26737883
.598
.5500 .14651163
MEANBUD
.1451244143E-01 .79633669E-02
1.822
.0684 34.473721
TEMENDAS -.3858447910E-02 .11157498E-01
-.346
.7295 29.186047
NCHANGES .2794665990E-01 .19860086
.141
.8881 .36744186
LEADER
.8213140995
.36830507
2.230
.0257 .17906977
ENTERCOA -.3185161355
.45306733
-.703 .4820 .88372093E-01
EXITCOAL -1.522776052
79978507
-1.904
.0569 .25581395E-01
PARTYPOS .3442679592
.22317216
1.543
.1229 .32558140
POSCON
.8083956134E-01 .85538932E-01
.945
.3446 .28604651
POSITIP1 .9992207667E-01 .90187636E-01
1.108
.2679 .90930233
POSITIE1 .4788252736E-01 .94947705E-01
.504
.6140 .60697674
CENTER98 .5383527839
.47649871
1.130
.2586 .38139535
RIGHT98
.5371098114
.50008577
1.074
.2828 .43488372
Percentage of Prediction: 74.41%
Log likelihood: -241.4274
Number of Observations: 430
Table 7. Parsimonious Model of Reelection
Variable |Coefficient |Standard Error |b/St.Er.|P[|Z|>z] | Mean of X
Characteristics in numerator of Prob[Y = 1]
Constant -.1127558822
.23331823
-.483
.6289
EXITCOAL -1.788066269
.68182357
-2.622
.0087 .28017241E-01
HISTEXEC -.4369261035
.16779599
-2.604
.0092 .28232759
LEADER
.6487199054
.27616820
2.349
.0188 .18750000
EMENDAS -.4484511059E-01 .25899218E-01
-1.732
.0834 3.0538793
PORK
.8056252385
.31689766
2.542
.0110 .31552215
MEANBUD
.1481634418E-01 .57850444E-02
2.561
.0104 34.361753
Percentage of Prediction: 66.59%
Log likelihood: -290.0980
Number of Observations: 464
37
Table 8. Descriptive Statistics of Elected Incumbents’ Expenditures in 1998
elections
EXPEND98 Mean
95% Confidence Interval for
Mean
5% Trimmed Mean
Median
Variance
Std. Deviation
Minimum
Maximum
Range
Interquartile Range
Skewness
Kurtosis
Statistic
164381.3932
Lower Bound 141543.0658
Std. Error
11592.6662
Upper Bound 187219.7207
143215.3107
119044.0000
31850408686.549
178466.8280
3000.00
1791000.00
1788000.00
170333.0000
4.131
.158
30.016
.315
Table 9. Descriptive Statistics of Non-Elected Incumbents’ Expenditures in 1998
elections
EXPENDS98Mean
95% Confidence Interval for
Mean
5% Trimmed Mean
Median
Variance
Std. Deviation
Minimum
Maximum
Range
Interquartile Range
Skewness
Kurtosis
Statistic
114745.2400
Lower Bound 71358.8047
Std. Error
21674.6047
Upper Bound 158131.6753
83493.0087
77396.0000
27717520945.581
166485.7980
8180.00
799817.46
791637.46
81926.9200
3.445
.311
11.837
.613
38
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