From Patronage to Program

Abstract

This article explains the unanticipated emergence of party-oriented legislators and rising party discipline in Brazil since the early 1990s. The authors contend that deputies in Brazil became increasingly party oriented because the utilities of party-programmatic and patronage-based electoral strategies shifted with market reforms that created a programmatic cleavage in Brazilian politics and diminished the resource base for state patronage. The study introduces new measures of partisan campaigns, party polarization, and values that legislators attached to party programs and voter loyalty based on an original survey of the Brazilian Congress. Regression analysis confirms that deputies who believe that voters value party programs have run partisan, programmatic campaigns, and those in polarized parties and those who believe voters are loyal to the party are willing to delegate authority to party leaders and do not switch parties. Party polarization and the proximity of deputies' policy preferences to their party's mean explain discipline on 236 roll-call votes in the 51st legislature (1999-2001).

Do elections matter for private-sector healthcare management in Brazil? An analysis of municipal health policy

“…First, we hypothesized that left-of-center political parties will demonstrate greater support for public sector health services, and thus be associated with fewer contracted private sector health care services. We based this hypothesis on recent theories that contend that Brazilian political parties increasingly demonstrate greater cohesion and programmatic behavior [2, 40]. The alternative hypothesis held that baseline institutional arrangements—the existing level of public-private health care contracts—would be a more important determinant of public-private health care management contracts at the end of a mayoral administration.…”

“…A competing view argues that political parties have become stronger over the years [40]. By this argument, politicians invest in “creating value for the party brands” as a means of distinguishing themselves programmatically from other parties [40].…”

“…By this argument, politicians invest in “creating value for the party brands” as a means of distinguishing themselves programmatically from other parties [40]. This party-oriented shift became more viable after larger scale policy reforms rendered small-scale forms of patronage less valuable for politicians.…”

Barriers to Egalitarianism: Distributive Tensions in Latin American Federations

“…Rent seeking linked to legislative malapportionment may thus limit redistribution. Local elites in poor and unequal states might discount the virtues of interpersonal redistribution because centralization of fiscal policies would undermine the local patronage networks they dominate (Hagopian, Gervasoni, and Moraes 2009;Fenwick 2009). Relatively recent transformations of Mexico's fiscal federalism also reflect the dual logics of the territorial structure of inequality and malapportionment.…”

The Electoral Success of the Left in Latin America: Is There Any Room for Spatial Models of Voting?

“…As Samuels (2006) argues, both endogenous and exogenous factors drove voters to support the PT, electing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) for his first term in office. Among the many exogenous factors stressed in the literature, none has gained more attention than the implementation and social impact of neoliberal policies during the nineties (Hagopian, Gervasoni, and Moraes 2009). For this explanation, the electoral success of the PT was driven by voters affected by the structural adjustment and several reforms entailing state retrenchment in the economy, in a country largely based on state-led economic development.…”