Gender and Corrupt Business Candidates: Evidence from Brazil

• In Event: Poster Session: Assessing Opinions and Attitudes in Education Politics & Political Economy I
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Economy I

Abstract

Why do voters support candidates that enter politics from the business world and exploit their political connections to favor their own companies – and how is voter support shaped by the gender of such candidates? The existing literature tends to view gender and female representation as separate from revolving door issues – where candidates enter politics from the private sector. In this paper, we study how voters evaluate (corrupt) revolving door candidates and how such evaluations are shaped by candidate gender. We do so specifically by analyzing how male and female business candidates’ involvement in corruption in public procurement processes affects voter support. That is, how does the gender of (corrupt) business candidates affect voter support during elections? To this end, we marshal evidence from a conjoint survey experiment implemented in Brazil in 2021 – shortly after the 2020 municipal elections. While women are generally underrepresented in leadership positions in private firms as well as in politics, Brazil has a 30% gender quota on candidate lists in municipal elections. Nevertheless, 60 percent of the municipalities had no women running for mayor during the 2020 elections. In addition, many candidates for municipal office enter politics based on careers as business owners or private sector managers – and most of these are men. This makes Brazil an ideal case to study the intersection of business and politics – and how it is related to women’s underrepresentation in politics. Our conjoint experiment allows us to shed new light on how voter support for business candidates is shaped by candidate – and voter – gender, and how voters more generally perceive such candidates. In this way, our paper contributes to open a new research agenda linking revolving door politics to female (under)representation in politics.

Authors

• Sina Smid, Uppsala University

• Amy Alexander, Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

• Mogens K. Justesen, Copenhagen Business School