Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil

Lee J. Alston and Bernardo Mueller

Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2006, vol. 22, issue 1, pages 87-114

Abstract: The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 gave relatively strong powers to the president. We model and test executive-legislative relations in Brazil and demonstrate that presidents have used pork as a political currency to exchange for votes on policy reforms. In particular Presidents Cardoso and Lula have used pork to exchange for amendments to the Constitution. Without policy reforms Brazil would have had greater difficulty meeting its debt obligations. The logic for the exchange of pork for policy reform is that presidents typically have greater electoral incentives than members of Congress to care about economic growth, economic opportunity, income equality, and price stabilization. Members of Congress generally care more about redistributing gains to their constituents. Given the differences in preferences and the relative powers of each, the legislative and executive branches benefit by exploiting the gains from trade. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewj001 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:22:y:2006:i:1:p:87-114

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.oup.co.uk/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Law, Economics and Organization is edited by Ian Ayres

More articles in Journal of Law, Economics and Organization from Oxford University Press
Address: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().