Political corruption in Brazil

Choosing the Form of Government: Theory and Evidence from Brazil

“…Indeed, the first popularly elected president after the military regime, Fernando Collor de Mello, was impeached in 1992 amid accusations of running a vast influence‐peddling scheme. Around the same time, a massive corruption scandal was uncovered involving at least 43 members of the congress, several public officials and a cartel of construction firms that controlled the procurement of public works in several parts of the country (Fleischer, ).…”

The Brazilian Landless Movement, Resistance, and Violence

“…In order for the system of decentralized state authority evident in the rural countryside, it is crucial to understand that many of the actors who appear to be weak under the power of the large landowners are actually corrupted through legitimate desires of capital accumulation and occupational protection. Numerous examples of political and legal corruption in Brazil have been documented (Geddes and Neto 1992;Prillaman 2000;Weyland 1998;Fleisher 1996…) and these elements of corruption are an underlying factor regarding the weakened state in the Brazilian countryside. Landowners and transnational corporations have the ability to pay off state agents or buy political or judicial seats.…”

Estimating the Nature of Political Corruption: Evidence From a Policy Experiment in Brazil

“…We contribute to the growing literature on political corruption (Olken 2007(Olken , 2009Ferraz & Finan 2011;Niehaus & Sukhtankar 2013;Bobonis et al 2011;Mauro 1998); to the literature of audits and their effects on agents (di Tella et al 2003;Kleven et al 2011;Bar-Ilan & Sacerdote 2001); and finally to the knowledge of the interaction of campaign financing and political corruption (Ackerman 1999, Speck 2010, Fleischer 1997, Gueddes & Neto 1992, Cordis & Milyo 2013. In short, our findings suggest that political corruption has more complex roots beyond the search of rent extraction by politicians and reflects a complex mechanism between the last a network of campaign financiers.…”

“…Fleischer (1997) given by each campaign financier empowers these elite agents to pressure and to punish corrupt politicians. Cordis and Milyo (2013) address the issue of whether different ways of campaign financing should impact a measure of corruption convictions in the US.…”

“…The literature has already reported some evidences of a quid pro quo relationship between politicians and their campaign financiers, where the former receive resources for their campaign and the last are privileged in public bids (Ackerman 1999, Speck 2010, Fleischer 1997, Gueddes & Neto 1992, Cordis & Milyo 2013. In fact, Cordis & Milyo (2013) make an initial attempt to estimate the campaign finance reforms on corruption convictions using variation across states in the US, though they do not have an exogenous variation in campaign finance reforms.…”