Saturating Partisanship: Credit-Claiming for Service Delivery in Brazil

• In Event: The Political Economy of Service Delivery in Developing Democracies

Abstract

If “policies make politics,” can they also boost the fortunes of particular parties? We argue that the partisan implication of government policies depend on the potential for credit claiming. Where a party or its civil society allies participate in the allocation of benefits, policies should create partisans, strengthen the party’s presence, and boost its electoral prospects. Where governments distribute benefits directly, party credit claiming should be more difficult and short-lived, especially in weak party systems, making partisan gains less likely. We test these arguments in Brazil, a traditional case of a weak party system, by analyzing the political effects of distributing rainwater cisterns in the drought-plagued Northeast. Under the Workers’ Party government (2002–2016), two distinct programs sought to mitigate rainwater shortages in this region. The first involved local civil society organizations—many of them closely allied to the Workers’ Party—in the construction of concrete cisterns, whereas the second consisted of government agencies directly distributing plastic cisterns without organizational intermediation. We hypothesize that cistern distribution via a civil society organization should benefit the Workers’ Party, boosting the number of candidacies, the party’s electoral fortunes, and the likelihood that individual cistern recipients become party members. Meanwhile, direct cistern distribution via the government should yield fewer party benefits. We test these hypotheses using unique, household-level databases of cisterns distributed through both programs, combined with a geographic regression discontinuity design and conjoint analysis from an original survey.

Authors

• Taylor C. Boas, Boston University

• F. Daniel Hidalgo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Yuri Kasahara, Oslo Metropolitan University