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Drought-Reliefs and Partisanship

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  • Federico Boffa
  • Francisco Cavalcanti
  • Christian Fons-Rosen
  • Amedeo Piolatto

Abstract

We analyse partisan biases in the allocation of central discretionary transfers in a federal country. We study drought aid-relief in Brazil, where presidential and municipal elections alternate every two years, to identify a novel pattern of distributive politics, determined by the sequence of central and local elections. In particular, we show that alignment advantage materialises only in the period before municipal elections, while it disappears in the period before presidential elections. Furthermore, we show that even before mayoral elections partisanship only counts for districts with intermediate levels of aridity, where being aligned causes an increase by a factor of almost two (equivalent to +18.1 p.p.) in the chances of receiving aid-relief. We rationalise this pattern in a model with office-motivated politicians and rational voters.

Suggested Citation

  • Federico Boffa & Francisco Cavalcanti & Christian Fons-Rosen & Amedeo Piolatto, 2022. "Drought-Reliefs and Partisanship," Working Papers 1337, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:1337
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    federalism; distributive politics; partisan alignment; presidential elections; aridity; Brazil;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

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