Competitive Oligarchies? Long Term Effects of Local Development Policy in Brazil

• In Event: Grassroots Politics: Collective Action, Elites, and Local Political Behavior

Abstract

What are the political impacts of decades of local development programs? Do subsidies and place-based policies aimed to mitigate the effects of chronic drought and stimulate local economic growth shape the political arena of benefitted localities? Existing research looking at the local effect of natural resource-based windfalls suggest that incumbent local politicians can benefit from these events by facilitating reelection. Moreover, some studies find changes in the socio-economic profile of candidates, as more resources tend to attract candidates with lower educational levels. These studies, however, tend to look at relative short-term impacts of these shocks. In this paper, we argue that long-term local development programs reduce the number of viable candidates in local elections. However, despite having elections with fewer competitive candidates, incumbents do not seem to have an apparent advantage. We support these claims by exploring a natural experiment based on the as-if random criteria to define municipalities in the Brazilian Northeast belonging to the Semi-Arid Zone (SAZ). The SAZ is an administrative area encompassing more than 1,000 Brazilian municipalities and approximately 22 million people. Municipalities located there have been entitled for decades to fiscal subsidies, infrastructure work for water provision and special social programs. By supplementing our analysis with qualitative evidence from these municipalities, we explore to what extent the mechanism explaining this concentration is the strengthening of traditional political dynasties over time.

Authors

• Yuri Kasahara, Oslo Metropolitan University

• Marcus Andre Melo, University of Pernambuco

• F. Daniel Hidalgo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology