The electoral bias: the political economy of subnational transfers in Latin America

This article examines whether transfers to local governments in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile have been allocated to obtain electoral advantage. A large panel dataset and fixed effects estimations uncover two type of manipulations: grant fluctuations along the municipal election cycle and biase...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Gainza Barrencua, Xabier, Livert Aquino, Felipe Bernabé
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad del País Vasco
Repositorio:Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación
OAI Identifier:oai:addi.ehu.eus:10810/70349
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10810/70349
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:distributive politics
intergovernmental transfers
Electoral competition
political budget cycles
local governments
Latin America
Descripción
Sumario:This article examines whether transfers to local governments in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile have been allocated to obtain electoral advantage. A large panel dataset and fixed effects estimations uncover two type of manipulations: grant fluctuations along the municipal election cycle and biases towards aligned municipalities. There are, notwithstanding, significant cross-country differences. In Brazil, Colombia and Chile mayors aligned with the central government coalition are systematically benefited, especially ahead elections, whereas in Mexico political budget cycles do not discriminate in terms of partisanship. These results point to institutional conditions and the nature of electoral competition shaping distributive politics.