1

Democratization and Local Government Performance in Brazil*

by

Pedro Cavalcante

PhD Candidate

Instituto de Ciência Política

Universidade de Brasília

cavalcante.pedro@gmail.com

*Paper to be presented at the 6th ECPR General Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, August 25-

27, 2011. I would like to thank the University of Brasilia for supporting this research. Gostaria

de agradecer a Universidade de Brasília pelo apoio financeiro.

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ABSTRACT

The 1988 federal constitution introduced a complex and innovative institutional arrangement that

not only reestablished political rights and democratic procedures, but also reinforced

decentralization as a fundamental guideline to policy implementation in Brazil. As a result,

municipalities have become pivotal actors in the policymaking process. Scholars of Latin

American politics have given much emphasis on the causes and determinants of decentralization,

but not much has been done toward understanding how this increased decentralization has

affected policymakers behavior and policy outcomes, more generally. This paper aims to do

exactly that. Specifically, it investigates how institutional arrangements and electoral competition

affect local government performance. The theoretical basis is the electoral democratic theory that

broadly highlights elections as instruments of citizen’s control in retrospective and prospective

voting approaches. The research employs a large-N cross-subnational quantitative analysis based

on a dataset of electoral, partisan, socioeconomic and public financial information collected of

Brazil’s 5500 municipalities. Local government performances, our dependent variables, are

synthetic indicators created from 2009 national wide surveys of public education, health, housing

and welfare services. The OLS regression results show that in all models environmental aspects

hold an exploratory status more consistent than political system factors. Nevertheless, we are still

able to confirm the hypothesis that politics variables do matter on how politicians make decisions

and implement policy under the new Brazilian democratic Era. In doing so, this paper helps to

expand our understanding of political system impact on policy outputs which is extremely

important not only to academic purpose but also as decision support for policy-makers.

KEYWORDS: Democracy; Institutional Change; Decentralization; Local Government

Performance; Brazil.

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Introduction

The 1988 federal Constitution introduced a complex and innovative institutional

arrangement that not only reestablished political rights and democratic procedures, but also

reinforced decentralization and citizen’s participation as fundamental guidelines to policy

implementation in Brazil. As a result, municipalities have become pivotal actors in the

policymaking process.

Scholars of Latin American politics have given much emphasis on the causes and

determinants of decentralization, but not much has been done toward understanding how politics

affects policymakers’ behavior and policy outputs under this new democratic setting. This paper

aims to do exactly that. Specifically, it investigates how political system’s aspects, such as

electoral competition, citizen’s participation, among others, impact local government

performance. This issue became even more relevant in comparative policy analysis due to the

fact that the policy’s results in Brazil are extremely diverse. Put differently, despite the advances

provided by the new legal configuration and governance improvements after two decades,

inequality is the word that best summarize policy implementation in this country.

It is noteworthy that the Brazilian cities are also heterogeneous in others aspects, such as

geographic, social and economic dimensions. However, are these environmental factors the only

reasons for the variance on policy outputs? This research main argument disagrees with it. The

hypothesis to be tested is that the political system’s dynamic in subnational level under new

democratic Era impacts governmental performance as well.

The inquiry employs a large-N cross-subnational quantitative analysis based on electoral,

partisan, socioeconomic and geographic data collected from almost every Brazilian’s

municipalities. Local government performances, our dependent variables, are synthetic indicators

created from 2009 national wide surveys of public education, health, housing and welfare

policies.

Besides introduction, the article is organized in other five sections. First of all, the

institutional and political transformations embedded in the democratization process are exposed,

considering their importance to understand the current framework of social policy

implementation. On topic three, the theoretical background is discussed. Basically, the debate

involves the relative importance of political and environmental aspects as determinants of

policies outputs. Following, the article outlines the methodology strategy, variables and

statistical models used to test its hypothesis. Finally, on topics five and six, the empirical results

and conclusions are debated.

Democratization and Institutional Changes in Brazil

After twenty-one years of military regime, in mid 80’s Brazil began to experience a

transition to democracy. Although some civil and political rights such as freedom of association,

right to assemble and to vote were restored in the beginning of this decade1, until 1990 the

1

The democratization transition a slowly and progressive process, started around 1979 with the amnesty to political

exiles. In 1982, the creation of new political parties was permitted as well as the right to vote for state governor and

state’s capitol mayor.

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country were governed by a politician not elected by the people2. Because of that, we do not

consider this administration a democratic one.

After the civil and political rights reestablishments, the federal Constitution of 1988 came

to intensify the process of democratization, stating social rights and new institutional

arrangements for the public policies.

It is a consensus that the Brazilian’s welfare system before Constitution was essentially

corporatist, political and financially centralized by the federal government (Draibe, 1990;

Medeiros, 2001; IPEA, 2009). The social policies were very restricted and fragmented. In others

words, the targeted population was restricted, mostly, urban workers and the benefits and

services provided by a diffused range of organizations.

During Constitution’s debates, nonetheless, demands for a more proactive state in social

area and fairly division of responsibilities and budget among government levels were evident.

Social movements and pressure groups pointed to deputies and senators the following demands:

inclusion of population sectors not covered by welfare or other social policy; permanent and

transparent mechanisms of policy financing; equal rights between urban and rural workers;

citizens’ participation in the policymaking processes and; above all, fiscal and administrative

decentralization. Consequently, the deliberations changed for good the public policy and state

responsibilities in the Brazil, because health, education, housing and welfare programs became

legally governmental commitment and citizen’s rights to whoever needs.

Universalism principles came along with remaining corporatism aspects (Esping-

Andersen, 1991; Carvalho, 2002) on the new policy arrangements that included bidding

governmental budget to health and education policy, welfare benefits without previous

contributions and labor rights such as minimum wage nationally unified, public pension system

and equivalent treatment for rural workers. Therefore, the formal assumptions were formulated

to accomplish a widespread and equal access to public policy, in order to move towards a

projected social democratic or universalistic model of welfare state.

Regarding policy management, important outcomes occurred in the social sector, as

consequence of an intensive lobbying by local politicians supporting coalition. Their demands

involved restructuring federative relations, local communities’ empowerment, more

governmental efficiency and efficacy and also an opening process to citizens’ involvement in

policy decisions (Souza, 2004).

Therefore, political, fiscal and administrative decentralizations were reinforced (Arretche,

2000; Montero & Samuels, 2004). The Constitution established federal state as immutable clause

and all municipalities in the country as autonomous entities, an innovative feature in federative

nations. All government levels – federal, states, federal district and municipalities – have

Executive and Legislative branches elected by people for a four year’s period, except the federal

senators that have eight years term in office. In addition, all government levels share certain

degree of administrative autonomy and a range of responsibilities, mostly, concerning fiscal and

social policy.

Because of these characteristics, Brazil is one of the most decentralized countries in the

world (Arretche, 2009; Abrúcio, 2005). Nevertheless, there is a dilemma in the country’s

governmental relationships that alternate between cooperative and competitive federalism.

The former consists in a division of responsibilities in order to preserve autonomy and

competition in certain policy’s areas. On the other hand, the latter means that all governmental

2

Trancredo Neves was elected President by the Congress in a restricted congressional election in 1985, but he died

before his President’s inauguration. Thus, Jose Sarney, the Vice President, took the office in instead.

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authorities have the same range of obligations in the interest of a joint policymaking process

(Elazar, 1987). Definitely, the Brazilian constitution deliberations are more approximate to the

cooperative model, since it states that important social policies implementation, such as welfare,

education, health and housing, shall be common responsibilities among local, state and federal

administrations.

Despite of this ideal purpose, in fact, difficulties to adopt systematically these formal

requirements in many policies have prevailed, because most of them lack institutional

mechanisms of intergovernmental coordination and cooperation. Hence, policy implementations

have been heterogeneous processes since then that vary accordingly the issue salience in agenda,

specific framework and predefined division of responsibilities and financial resources.

Moreover, others three aspects in the literature assemble a certain degree of consensus.

First, local governments’ pivotal role is due to their proximity to people preferences and the

Brazilian’s continental dimensions. Secondly, federal administration is also a protagonist player,

mainly, because of its financial and regulatory powers. Finally, as well as in others successful

decentralization processes, in Brazil it is highly dependent on institutional arrangement

formulated to simultaneously constraint and motivate subnational authorities to cooperate with

shared management. This kind of strategy is founded on agreements about governmental duties

and technical and financial support from federal administration (Arretche, 2004; Kaufman &

Nelson, 2004).

Scholars have noticed that the most important social policies in Brazil are grounded on

the same formal and informal rules for every municipality. The legal and operational frameworks

elaborated by the federal government are supposed to embrace impersonal and technical

procedures. Nevertheless, these frameworks do not explain all policies outputs, since local

government performance is far from homogeneous. This highlight how crucial is to investigate

the determinants of local politician’s behavior.

Policy determinants’ Debate

After all, what are the causes of policy’s results or outputs? It is, definitely, not a simple

question. Thus, since 50’s political scientist, economists and policy analyst have been studying

the impacts of socioeconomic and political variables over governmental performances diversity.

Thus, it has become a subfield of comparative politics that changed the strategy from thick

descriptions to Large N studies and has experienced a substantial progress either in theoretical

and methodological perspectives, including an evident improvement on statistical techniques

(Blomquist, 1999).

The policy analyses in the beginning were dominated by the US states’ inquiries, due to

the quality and amount of data available. Albeit on the last decades, researchers have expanded

to cross-national and local government studies including Latin America countries. Without a

normative or prescriptive commitment, they are concerned with a positivist approach.

The major studies from 1960’s sought to prove the findings of V.O. Key Jr. (1951) e

Duane Lockard (1959) that recognized the politics importance in few US state’s welfare

expenditures. In contrast, scholars such as Dawson & Robinson (1963), Dye (1966) e Hofferbert

(1966) elaborated models, strongly influenced by the system theory of David Easton (1957), to

analyze how variables such as political competition, legislative Malapportionment, legislative

control, among others affect policy outputs. Their findings were surprising at the time, because

the empirical results indicated that political variables weren’t as important as democracy theory

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advocated. Hofferbert’s statement (1966, p. 82) reaffirmed that: “the nature of the party system

and its operation do not seem to go very far toward explaining the kind of policies produced in

the states…however, clear indication that there is a relationship between environment and

policy”.

After a decade of skepticism, in mid-70’s others inquiries started to rescue the politics’

salience on analysis of policy’s determinants. The literature revision argued that the lack of

statistical significance between political variables and policy outputs was due to measurement

and conceptual problems (Gray, 1976). New methodological techniques were employed, varying

from simple path analysis to time-series regression. The focus moved from US states to cross-

nation studies and their findings went beyond the false debate over the conflict between

environmental and political importance (Lewis-Beck, 1977; Hibbs, 1977; Cameron, 1978; Gray,

1976; Castles & McKinlay, 1979). They proved that both have impacts on policy outcomes and

set up a new research agenda concentrated on the interactive relation among these variables.

Recently, Imbeau, Pétry e Lamari (2001) summarize the most cited articles of the

subfield in an effort to elaborate taxonomy of policy determinants. On one hand, advocates of the

‘convergence’ school of thought argues that political and institutional differences do not matter

to explain policy’s outputs, since industrialized societies have become increasingly homogenous.

As a result, they face the same social and economic problems and implement similar kind of

solutions. On the opposite side, scholars advocate that politics do matter. They argue that

economic and social factors cannot be neglected, but political variables are relevant in explaining

governmental outputs as well.

Overall, the scholar’s main goal, particularly in political science, is to identify and

measure the effects of political systems, in its many aspects, on public policy in order to test core

assumptions of electoral democracy theory. Within accountability approach, democracy

supposedly tends to produce controlled and accountable governments to the voters in which

political parties act as central players in an open, fair and regular electoral process. The belief is

that electoral results and partisan rules, even the informal ones, operate as democratic incentives

and constraints to politician performance better (Manin, Przeworski & Stokes, 1999). So,

elections are the fundamental mechanism of accountability that allows citizens assess

incumbents. The voter behave vary between the retrospective and prospective voting logics. The

first voters grade politicians' or political parties' past performance in office, rewarding with re-

election or punishing those with defeat at the polls (Fiorina, 1981). Alternatively, prospective

voting stresses that voters base their choice on expectations about future politicians’ performance

(Maravall, 2005). Obviously, these accountability mechanisms are conditioned by a minimalist

definition of democracy in which election is not sufficient but it’s a necessary requirement.

In Brazilian literature, policy determinants still an area of study undeveloped.

Paradoxically, the political, institutional and administrative characteristics provide excellent

conditions to undertake this type of comparative inquiry. This case offers a large number of

observations, especially in local level, that share the same set of formal rules and ethnic, cultural

and historical homogeneity, allowing focusing on the influence of political variables and other

desired characteristics.

Researches concerning determinants of health policy (Arretche & Marques, 2002),

welfare program’s adoption (Coelho, 2010) and social expenditures in municipalities (Ribeiro,

2005) have confirmed, in different degrees, that politics matter. However, their findings are

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results of unconditional hypotheses that neglect interaction among variables. In order to overlap

this shortcoming this current inquiry aim to test models with interaction that produce conditional

hypothesis, especially, those that take for granted the municipality’s wealth. This variable may

be relevant to measure the determinants of local government performance given that it clearly

has influence on tax revenues and, consequently, on the policymaking process.

Methodology

Measuring Government Performance

Given the 1988 constitutional outcomes, this analysis will be focused on management

and implementation of the most developed social policies in the country: education, health,

housing and welfare. We begin with a brief overview of each policy, following by the

description of the method used to measure local government performance and its distribution in

Brazilian municipalities.

Regarding education policy, many important changes since 1988 introduced a entire new

administrative and financial framework. Local governments have become responsible for basic

education, from early childhood education through junior high school, and legally forced to

invest 25% of their budget on it. In 2007, a federative fund (Fundeb) was approved in an effort to

increase policy’s resources, consequently, to improve quality of educational systems.

Furthermore, federal transfers to subnational governments are based on technical requirements,

such as number of child enrollment. Although the education access has been universalized, its

quality is far from developed countries’ stage and is also characterized by intra-nation

inequalities.

The circumstances are not different in health policy. During the 90’s, an intense

decentralization process was conducted by the federal government in order to implement the

constitutional principles of universal and free health services for the entire population. The

Unified Health System (SUS) framework are grounded on regionalized and hierarchical

resources transfers to subnational administrations that have to complement with part of their

budget. Even though several improvements on policymaking process have occurred since mid-

1980 the sector is still the major concern of Brazilian authorities.

In a latter transformation process, welfare was well-known by private sector dominance

and residual actions. The area undertook its national plan only in 2004 that settled a complete

new framework based on public services and income transfers focused on the poorest. The

recently created Unified Welfare System (SUAS) copies its health alike, in particular,

establishing decentralization and intergovernmental partnership as guidelines. Accordingly, the

new governance arrangement aims to turn local government in a pivotal player, nevertheless,

differently from health and education, federal government continues to concentrate the budgeting

and regulation controls.

Finally, the Brazilian public housing is still the most financial centralized and less

regulated among these four policies. The decentralized process was not successful, partly

because of the lack of regulation in the Federal Constitution that did not define management

responsibilities among government levels, leading to an uncoordinated implementation process.

Only in 2008, a governmental integration process has started at least in formally, although there

are no reports or evaluations that assess its impact on housing policy so far.

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Thus, how local government performance, our dependent variable, can be measured?

Performance in public affair is a subject extremely complex that may involve a vast range of

approaches. In order to analyze local politicians’ behavior and test the impact of the political

system on them we choose to examine policy outputs of education, health, housing and welfare

instead of their outcomes. The former reflects more precisely the local government decisions and

actions whereas policy outcomes are more influenced by environmental variables and by other

programs of different governmental spheres, known as the marble cake problem (Sharkansky,

1967).

Nevertheless, policy outputs are complicated to define and cope as well, once they can

involve a large set of indicators. To deal with it, we formulated synthetic indexes that combine

several indicators of two policy outputs dimensions: administrative capacity and service

provision. These indexes are based on 2009 national wide local government survey

(MUNIC/IBGE) and also datasets from Ministries of Education, Health and Social Development.

Because the datasets are composed by a broad list of variables, the research employs principal

component analysis (PCA) to aggregate and reduce the data to just four indexes of each

dimension3 (see Appendix 1 for details). Considering the great population and size differences

among cities in Brazil, the synthetic indexes were elaborated after separating the cities on

population’s range4.

The administrative capacity indexes intend to depict an overview of the local government

framework structured to implement each social policy. They include indicators of sector’s human

resources, department organization, legislation and management tools, management resources

and intergovernmental relations. As expected, even controlled by population size, the

disproportion of administrative capacity among municipalities is substantial in all four policies.

The indexes distribution, presented visually in Fig. 1, demonstrates that they vary intra and inter

policy sector. Another aspect that stands out is the housing indexes distribution that not only

shows the lowest mean (24,8) but also has the highest standard deviation (17,5), almost the

double of the welfare. This is not new, since the literature already defines housing policy in

Brazil as the less developed among them (Arretche, 2009).

3 After normalized, the indexes vary from 0 to 100.

4 The taxonomy from Brazilian Statistical and Geographic Institute (IBGE) divides the municipalities in seven

population’s range: up to 5,000 inhabitants; from 5,001 to 10,000; from 10,001 to 20,000 inhabitants; from 20,001

to 50,000; from 50,001 to 100,000 inhabitants; and 100,001 to 500,000; with over 500,000 inhabitants.

9

Fig. 1. Distribution of Administrative Capacity indexes, Municipalities in Brazil

Regarding the second performance measurement, service provision indexes are based on

different indicators of each social policy, because their features and frameworks are extremely

distinctive. The appendix exposes how synthetic indexes are composed, including their thematic

indicators that basically encompass the diversity and quantity of services provided. Similarly to

the latter, this output dimension is very dispersed in Brazilian cities as Fig. 2 reveals. Once

again, housing policy displays the highest standard deviation, around 15 points, whereas health

has the lowest mean.

Fig. 2. Distribution of Service Provision indexes, Municipalities in Brazil

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Hypotheses and Variables

The main goal of this inquiry is to prove that not only environmental factors cause the

variance on policy outputs, but also that the dynamic of political system has influenced

municipal performance in Brazil. Hence, it is fundamental to test how political variables,

products of the new democratic era, affect the municipality’s ability to perform well.

The first factor that should influence is policy outputs is electoral competition5 that has

been used as independent variables from the beginning of the subfield (Key Jr., 1951) through

more current inquiries (Cleary, 2007). Under many perspectives, the core premise is that

electoral competition functions as accountability’s mechanism, in some sense of how threatened

and worried the incumbent party should feel that they might lose the next election.

Ideology is also a common variable in most policy determinants analyses (Imbeau, Pétry

e Lamari, 2001). The hypothesis borrows Anthony Downs (1957) view that leftist parties tend to

have a more proactive position concerning the governmental intervention in the economy

whereas right-wings parties are supporters of less state and free market. Thus, we expect that as

more leftist the mayor’s party is, the better his performance will be in social policy. To measure

ideology we use a left-right estimation of the political parties in Brazil elaborated by Power e

Zucco Jr (2008)6 that place them regarding their congressmen’s opinions on governmental

intervention in the economy.

The third and four factors intend to test how political relationships between different

levels of government may affect a municipality ability to perform. Therefore, the variables

governor and federal alignments7 aim to perceive whether party differences among

intergovernmental politicians facilitate or prevent cooperation in policy implementation, as

literature predicts (Cox & McCubbins, 1986; Arretche & Rodden, 2004).

Furthermore, another important aspect in policy analysis is the influence of the legislative

branch. Scholars have demonstrated how formal and informal institutions embedded in the

Legislative-Executive relations matter to the decision and policy making processes in Brazil

(Figueiredo & Limongi, 1999) and worldwide (Stein et al, 2006;). Despite the literature focus on

national level, this dynamic is relevant to study subnational government as well, especially in

Brazil where local representatives are elected and have a extensive range of duties and

responsibilities, such as law approval, budgeting and government oversight, among others. This

institutional arrangement entails a setting in which the local council (Camara dos Vereadores)

may act as a veto player, borrowing George Tsebelis (2002) terminology. Consequently, we

5 There are many ways to measure how closely parties are competing, we chose effective number of parties index,

the most common one that has an updated version formulated by Grigorii Golosov (2010):

Where Np : electoral competitiveness; S1: the largest component of the number of votes or the number of seats

received by a party; Si : the number of votes or the number of seats received by the i-th party; x: the smallest

component of the number of votes or the number of seats received by a party. 6 The ideology placement varies from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right). We use the average of party estimation

from the last three mayor’s terms of office. 7 State alignment means that the mayor and the state governor are in the same party. On the other hand, federal

alignment means that the mayor’s party is part of the Presidential coalition. Both are measured in years.

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expect that the level of the legislative's control, measured by the percentage of local deputies that

are member of the same party or coalition of the city mayor, can influence on his or her

performance.

It is worth mentioning that all these previous political variables include data from three

municipal elections (1996, 2000 and 2004) and their subsequent mandates. The assumption is

that policy implementation is not a product of a single term of office, but a result of incremental

processes.

The last political variable that should be linked to government performance involves the

theory of social capital. Generally, Robert Putnam (1999) argues that citizens’ involvement in

public decisions tend to positively affect governmental performance. Thus, the level of citizens’

participation openness is a social capital proxy8 that measures how the municipality’s social

policies committees are organized and functioning.

Apparently, the city wealth might affect policy performance, because local governments

should be able to provide better services due to a larger budget (Sharkansky, 1967; Gray, 1976).

Therefore, per capita income is used not only as an independent variable, but also conditioning

the political variables effects. Finally, as the country’s demographic and socioeconomic

diversity, control variables must be included9. Table 1 presents the list of independent variables,

political and control ones, with their expected signs in terms of positive or negative relations to

the dependent variables.

Table 1. Independent Variables and Expected Signs

Political Variables Expected Sign

Electoral Competion (+)

Governor's Alignment (+)

Federal's Alignment (+)

Ideology (-)

Legislative's Control (+)

Citizens' Participation (+)

Control Variables Expected Sign

Income (+)

North and Northeast (-)

Urbanization (+)

Education (+)

8 This variable follows the same technique employed on the dependent variables indexes, principal component

analysis (PCA). The synthetic index is based on data of the existence, features and effectiveness of municipality’s

committees, also separated by population’s range. 9 Others control variables are urbanization rate, municipalities of North and Northeast regions and education

(educational attainment).

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Using these set of variables to explain the local performance’s variety in the two

dimensions selected, the research employs multiple regression analysis, more precisely, ordinary

least square (OLS) method on a cross-section data. The following equations are estimated:

Y = β0 + βpol Xpol + βint Xpol.Xwealth + βcon Xcon + ε

Where,

Y = synthetic indexes of administrative capacity and service provision (education, health,

housing and welfare);

β0 = Y- intercept;

βpol, βint and βcon = coefficients of political, interaction and control variables;

Xpol = matrix of political variables;

Xwealth = per capita income;

Xcon = matrix of control variables;

The research covers almost all Brazilian municipalities10

, exactly 5.563 units of analysis.

The databases are provided by official federal government institutions which generate more

reliance and the methodological choice follows the recommendations of large number of

observations (King et al, 1994) and focus on subnational units (Snyder, 2001).

Analysis

The following tables show the regression results separated by each dependent variables

dimensions. Regarding administrative capacity, the test f in all four equations indicate F greater

than the critical F-values which leads to the perception that when socioeconomic variables are

controlled, political system variables have significant independent impacts on local

government’s performance. However, these impacts vary drastically, in particular, between

social policy areas. These findings are plausible and coincide with the literature of policy

determinants (Gray, 1976; Hwang & Gray, 1991; Lewis-Beck, 1977).

Contrary to our expectations, the two most recurring political variables, electoral

competition and ideology do not reveal statistical significance. In other words, at least in the way

local governments are organized to implement these policies, electoral threat or left and right

principles don’t seem to matter. On the other hand, the degree of which citizens are able to

participate in the policymaking process appears statistical and practical significant at the same

time in education, health and welfare, exactly the sectors that implementation are in more

advanced phases (Arretche, 2004; Franzese & Abrucio, 2009).

Continuing on political variables, the last three – governor and federal alignment and

legislative control, show few and contradictory main effects. While partisan alliance with the

governor has impact on administrative capacity only in housing policy, while the proximity

between mayor’s party and Presidential’s coalition seem to be important just in welfare policy.

10

Only two municipalities were excluded, because they haven’t experienced electoral process until 2004.

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Table 2. Determinants of Local Government's Administrative Capacity

Variables Education Health Housing Welfare

Electoral Competition.573

(.88)

-.27

(.52)

.666

(.929)

.125

(.482)

Governor's Alignment-.007

(-.10)

.037

(.064)

.236**

(.114)

.055

(.059)

Federal's Alignment-.022

(.11)

-.01

(.067)

-.173

(.119)

.142**

(.062)

Ideology-.479

(.31)

-.164

(.186)

-.429

(.333)

-.277

(.173)

Social Participation1.12**

(.36)

.508**

(.216)

.557

(.386)

.677***

(.20)

Legislative Control-5.21*

(2.13)

1.48

(.1.24)

1.23

(2.23)

3.08**

(1.55)

Income.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Electoral Competion-.000*

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000 **

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Governor's Alignment-.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000*

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Federal's Alignment-.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

Income X Ideology.000*

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000*

(.000)

Income X Social Participation-.01

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Legislative Control-.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

Urbanization.129***

(.016)

.007

(.009)

.031*

(.16)

.045***

(.008)

North-Northeast2.82***

(.60)

1.76***

(.352)

-6.62***

(.63)

.331

(.326)

Education.891***

(.23)

.309**

(.14)

.788**

(.251)

.393**

(.130)

Constant35.14 ***

(2.90)

61.64***

(1.70)

22.62***

(3.04)

55.37***

(.157)

F Significance .000 .000 .000 .000

R2 .044 .011 .064 .028

N 5563 5563 5563 5563

Note: table entries are coefficients; standard errors are shown in parentheses.

* Significant at .1 level; ** Significant at .05; *** Significant at .01 level.

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Surprisingly, what calls more attention are the results of income, both its direct and

interactive effects. The first is null in all four models, without any statistical and practical

significance. Hence, although some of the political variables conditionalized by the

municipalities’ income per capita presented statistical significance, neither of them demonstrated

coefficients substantial in a practical sense.

In the opposite, the environmental variables demonstrate to be more relevant, bringing

back the 60’s debate over the superiority of these aspects in explaining policy outputs (Dawson

& Robinson, 1963; Dye, 1966; Hofferbert, 1966). As we projected, local performances are

affected by educational attainment and urbanization, except in health area. So, local governments

tend to respond to urbanized cities and higher educated society with a more structured way to

manage their resources. In relation to the city’s geographic location, the dummy North-

Northeast’s results indicate that these less development regions may achieve a better

performance in education and health due to the need of their population. Even though this

argument doesn’t stand for housing policy, given that in this case the relation is negative.

Turning to the service provision’s models, we observe some similarities with

administrative capacity but different patterns as well. The f tests also confirm that political

factors have influence independently on social policy performance and their impacts are far from

constant among policies. On the other hand, the empirical results display more significant impact

of political system aspects than the previous dimension.

Beginning with electoral competition, our findings cast doubt on the applicability of

election threat theory in Brazil, because this variable is significant only in two policies and its

relations are negative. These results are intriguing, since the level of rivalry on electoral

processes is supposed to produce a worse social policy provision. Indeed, this entails a more

detailed inquiry.

Concerning partisan alignment, it is possible to infer that legal and operational

frameworks formulated after the Constitution of 1988 have been respected. Strong evidence is

that none of the social services analyzed appears to be influenced by the fact that the mayor’s

party has been part of the Presidential’s coalition. The same impersonal and formalized

procedures do not seem to be presented on the state level, as the party association has impact

positively, health and education, and negatively in welfare.

The other three political variables’ results coincides with the theoretical assumptions

and, consequently, with our expectations. Partisan ideology presents a negative relation in

education and welfare, which indicates that as more leftist the local government is, more

interventionist tend to be its performance in social policy. Our findings regard to citizenry

activity are even more clear than in administrative capacity, confirming Putnam (1999) thesis

that social participation leads to better governmental performance. Finally, the variable that

depicts the Executive-Legislative dynamic is significant both in statistical and practical senses. A

variance of ten per cent of mayor’s legislative control has an impact of around one point points

on the scores of education, housing and welfare services.

Once again, municipalities’ income has no influence upon the selected policies. These

empirical results reveal its irrelevance either in direct and interactive effects. Albeit, others

environmental aspects may not be neglected, in particular, urbanization and education, although

their effects vary considerably among the policies. The dummy North-Northeast shows

coefficients variation, but once again its relations are positive for education and welfare and

negative to health and housing, repeating the ambiguous findings of administrative capacity’s

dimension.

15

Table 3. Determinants of Local Government's Service Provision

Variables Education Health Housing Welfare

Electoral Competition-.717*

(.378)

.158

(.553)

.490

(.802)

-1.25**

(.601)

Governor's Alignment.133**

(.046)

.139**

(.068)

-.006

(.098)

-.205**

(.073)

Federal's Alignment.009

(.049)

.059

(.071)

-.141

(.103)

.047

(.77)

Ideology-.599***

(.136)

-.215

(.198)

.372

(.288)

-.868***

(.216)

Social Participation.767***

(.157)

.0564**

(.230)

.809**

(.333)

.602**

(.250)

Legislative Control4.97***

(.908)

.807

(1.32)

5.13**

(1.92)

4.809***

(1.44)

Income.000***

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Electoral Competion.000***

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Governor's Alignment.000**

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

Income X Federal's Alignment.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Ideology.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

Income X Social Participation.000***

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

.000

(.000)

Income X Legislative Control.000***

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000

(.000)

.000**

(.000)

Urbanization.026***

(.007)

.032***

(.01)

.04**

(.014)

.086***

(.011)

North-Northeast-8.481***

(.256)

5.103***

(.375)

1.61**

(.543)

-.886**

(.407)

Education2.60***

(.102)

.455**

(.149)

.065

(.217)

.703***

(.162)

Constant 46.9*** 17.77*** 22.63*** 44.87***

F Significance .000 .000 .000 .000

R2 .525 .05 .012 .057

N 5563 5563 5563 5563

Note: table entries are coefficients; standard errors are shown in parentheses.

* Significant at 0.1 level; ** Significant at 0.05; *** Significant at 0.001 level.

16

Conclusions

Brazil is a successful case of democratization process that in a relative short period has

reestablished political and civil rights and built a comprehensive and innovative social policy

system. The new policy governance is grounded on constitutional rights, complex

intergovernmental relationships and citizen participation. Because of these institutional

transformations, analyses of the democracy impact on policymaking and its outputs are essential.

In this context, this paper achieved its goal by featuring implications both in methodological and

substantive aspects.

First, we tried to overcome the many variables and small N problem of the

decentralization case studies. Our methodological strategy is able to minimize this dilemma by

increasing its ability to generalize inferences. Besides, we formulated original and

comprehensive performance measurements that describe how municipalities organize and

provide public services. This operational technique may be an alternative to deal with the

intrinsic complexity of studying policy outputs. Finally, we chose interactive analyses between

income and political variables, a method neglected by the policy analysts in Brazil.

Regarding the substantive aspect, the empirical results demonstrate that political factors

cannot be ignored in this kind of policy analysis. Some important variables do not present direct

effect on government performance, such as electoral competition. Likewise, surprisingly, the

interactions between income and political variables were not either statistical or practical

significant. On the other hand, federal alignment and citizens’ participation results support the

argument in favor the actual influence of democratization on policymaking frameworks and

outputs. Moreover, the research confirms previous findings that politics effects vary among

policy sectors, although there weren’t obvious patterns, except for the fact that education and

welfare are the most affected by independent variables, in generally.

Lastly, it is evident in all models that environmental aspects hold an exploratory position

more consistent than political system factors. Nevertheless, we are still able to confirm the

hypothesis that politics variables do matter on how politicians make decisions and implement

policy under the new Brazilian democratic Era. In doing so, this paper helps to expand our

understanding of political system impact on policy outputs which is extremely important not

only to academic purpose but also as decision support for policy-makers.

17

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20

APPENDIX – Synthetic Indexes

Table 4. Administrative Capacity (Education, Health, Housing and Welfare)

Indicator Source

Human Resources*

Department Organization

Legislation and Management Tools

Management Resources

Intergovernmental Relations

* This data is not available for housing policy.

MUNIC/IBGE (2009)

DATASUS (2009)

Educational Census/INEP (2009)

Table 5. Service Provision – Education

Indicator Source

Number of Schools

School facilities

School Equipaments

Diversity Policy MUNIC/IBGE (2009)

Bolsa Família - Education SENARC/MDS (2009)

Educational Census/INEP (2009)

21

Table 6. Service Provision – Health

Indicator Source

Health Facilities

Ambulatory Attendance

Health care units

Immunization policy

Family health program MUNIC/IBGE (2009)

Bolsa Família - Health SENARC/MDS (2009)

DATASUS (2009)

Table 7. Service Provision – Housing

Indicator Source

Housing Policy Database

Housing Programs

Land Policy

MUNIC/IBGE (2009)

Table 8. Service Provision – Welfare

Indicator Source

Services provided

Welfare activities

Welfare Arrangements

Cash Transfer and Income Generation programmes SENARC/MDS (2009)

MUNIC/IBGE (2009)