Party switching and political outcomes: evidence from Brazilian municipalities

Henrique Hott and Sergio Naruhiko Sakurai ()
Additional contact information
Sergio Naruhiko Sakurai: FEA-RP/USP

Public Choice, 2021, vol. 187, issue 3, No 7, 403-438

Abstract: Abstract Although party switching is a relatively rare event in most countries, the phenomenon is widespread in Brazil. This paper investigates the effects of party switching on political and economic variables between 2001 and 2012 using a database containing more than 4900 Brazilian municipalities. In particular, given that the conventional literature addresses party switching by legislators, this paper focuses on chief executives, specifically mayors, a subject that has not yet been explored in the literature. In this study, party switching is interpreted as a treatment effect: the treated group comprises municipalities whose mayors changed parties during their terms in office. The control group comprises municipalities with no party switching, but with similar likelihoods of being treated, as defined by propensity score matching (PSM) methods. Our results suggest that mayors belonging to the same party as the state governor or the president are less likely to switch parties. Moreover, switching from a different party to the state governor’s party creates the best results for switchers who want to be renominated. Regarding reelection, our panel estimations suggest that the impact of party switching on reelection is positive. Finally, we find no statistically significant effect of party switching on the amounts of transfers received by municipalities from upper government levels.

Keywords: Party switching; Brazilian municipalities; Electoral performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D72 H79 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-020-00786-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:187:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-020-00786-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-020-00786-6

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().