The Election of Law and Order Politicians in Brazil

• In Event: The Political Economy of Latin America

Abstract

When do politicians campaigning on a law and order agenda benefit at the polls? Informed
by the classic literature on economic models for welfare preferences, I consider a
model that predicts that voters have redistributive and insurance incentives to vote for law and order politicians. Redistribution plays a role because the costs from a rise in punitiveness fall mostly on low-income groups; therefore, the affluent have higher benefits and lower costs of voting for law and order. On the insurance side, I argue that the chance of being a crime victim shapes the amount of public insurance the voter is willing to buy in the electoral market. In contrast to most of the economic models of welfare, however, this model predicts that the redistributive and insurance effects are correlated. In societies where crime has spiked and risk of exposure is high, my model predicts that the affluent exhibit higher income effects on the support for punitiveness. The model is empirically tested in the Brazilian case where violence has become a central concern and politicians from law enforcement agencies have appeared quite frequently on the ballot. I use electoral data aggregated by each voting station for legislative races in Brazil from 2002-2018, and geolocated official data on crime in two major cities in Brazil to test the model. The results provide a general theory to understand preferences for punitiveness when voting in the midst of violence.

Author

• Tiago Augusto da Silva Ventura, University of Maryland