Does electoral competition affect political selection, campaign funds and performance? Evidence from Brazilian municipal elections
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2020-05-18
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Mattos, Enlinson
Fuente Estevan, Fernanda Gonçalves de La
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This paper analyzes the causal impact of electoral competition on political selection, campaign funds, and performance in office. We use, for investigation, the 2012 Brazilian mayoral elections. To overcome potential endogeneity concerns and identify the causal effect, we adopt the empirical strategy proposed by Shaukat (2019), which adapts the traditional shift-share instrument to the electoral competition context. This approach explores aggregate changes in party popularity over time (at the national and state levels) to capture exogenous variation in electoral competition at the municipal level in Brazil. As main results, first, we find evidence that electoral competition favors the selection and election of older politicians, the election of women, of less wealthy candidates, and without any type of electoral incumbency (i.e., politicians who do not occupy, at the time of candidacy, an elective office). We consider these results a beneficial effect since electoral competition increases the electoral success of politician profiles underrepresented in the Brazilian political scenario. Second, we find robust evidence that electoral competition increases campaign financing and expenditures. We explain these results using the particular relevance of some channels, and we interpret them as a strategic allocation of resources by political agents. Finally, we find evidence that electoral competition increases the performance of the mayor in office, as measured by municipal performance indicators in terms of investment, education, personnel expenditures, and liquidity. Overall, our results highlight the relevance of electoral incentives in the behavior of political agents in Brazil.