Brazilian Political Science Review

24

Authors: Wagner Pralon Mancuso, Dalson Britto Figueiredo Filho, Bruno Wilhelm Speck, Lucas Emanuel Oliveira Silva, Enivaldo Carvalho da Rocha

What is the profile of candidates whose electoral campaigns are the most dependent on corporate donations? Our main objective is to identify factors that help explaining the level of corporate dependence among them. We answer this question in relation to the 2010 elections for federal deputy in Brazil. We test five hypotheses: 01. right-wing party candidates are more dependent than their counterparts on the left; 02. government coalition candidates are more dependent than candidates from the opposition; 03. incumbents are more dependent on corporate donations than challengers; 04. businesspeople running as candidates receive more corporate donations than other candidates; and 05. male candidates are more dependent than female candidates. Methodologically, the research design combines both descriptive and multivariate statistics. We use OLS regression, cluster analysis and the Tobit model. The results show support for hypotheses 01, 03 and 04. There is no empirical support for hypothesis 05. Finally, hypothesis 02 was not only rejected, but we find evidence that candidates from the opposition receive more contributions from the corporate sector.

26

Authors: Fabio Pereira de Andrade, Fernanda Lima-Silva

This article is a contribution to the study of the decision-making behind social policies. The literature usually stresses the role of elected politicians and the parliament in framing policies and underestimates governmental stakeholders, who do not hold elected offices, and bureaucrats. This article aims to highlight the active role of high-level federal bureaucrats in the design of policies. The analysis reclaims the classical categories and concepts developed by Lindblom (1980) and Crozier (1964), which points to the hybrid behaviour of bureaucrats and politically-appointed actors. Our aim is to show that decision-making is the result of the interactions between elected politicians and hybrid high-level federal bureaucracy, who organize themselves in groups around different technical-political projects. The analysis is developed through a case study of a policy that resulted in the merger of the existing federal conditional cash transfer programs, and generated one of the most globally-recognized social policies of Brazil, the Bolsa Família Program, in 2003.

31

Authors: Fernando Meireles

Research on executive-legislative relations in presidential systems have emphasized how presidents use cabinet appointments to form and manage government coalitions in the absence of majority legislative support. Yet not all coalitions are similar, as some are larger and, consequently, more prone to agency and coordination problems than others. But what shapes presidents’ decision to include more parties in their coalitions? While several hypotheses exist in the literature, few have been tested in a systematic fashion, none focusing on why surplus coalitions form. This article intends to fill this gap by examining an original time-series cross-sectional dataset comprising 168 unique coalitions in all 18 Latin American presidential countries since 1979. In particular, I find that highly fragmented party systems and presidents with great legislative powers are more likely to generate oversized government coalitions. An additional analysis, with monthly data from Brazilian cabinets between 1989 and 2010, also shows that supermajority rules and bicameralism dynamics play a role in the occurrence of surplus coalitions, but party discipline and presidential approval do not.

35

Authors: Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, Camila Mont’Alverne

Studies on the effects of the internet on elections have revealed how Social Network Sites (SNSs) are used by citizens to learn about, choose and contact their representatives. This article analyzes 27 Twitter accounts managed by Fortaleza's city councilors who ran for reelection in October 2012. The study aimed to discover the importance of Twitter in the councilors' campaign strategies: what kind of messages were sent by the councilors who adopted digital communication strategies to their followers, and the relationship between party affiliation and e-campaigns. The article shows that communitarian sociability, understood as face-to-face relations or interactions among individuals, affects how the internet is used in local campaigns, since there is no direct relationship between electoral success and the heavy use of Twitter by candidates, at least in proportional local elections (which are defined as cases in which candidates do not necessarily need to reach the votes of a majority of constituents, but only a part of them). However, those who adopt a digital communication strategy use it to broadcast their political platforms and promote their campaign events. Finally, except for small left-wing parties, there appears to be no relationship between party affiliation and e-campaigns.