Abstract
A prominent question in recent comparative work is "when will the personal vote matter?" Typically, scholars approach this question at a cross-national as opposed to a cross-party level: that is, they highlight features of national electoral systems that create incentives for individual politicians to pursue a personal (or a party) vote, rather than highlighting features of parties that might predispose candidates in those parties to pursue personal (or party) votes. Implicitly, the electoral-systems comparisons hold constant party features. In this paper, in contrast, I focus on the characteristics of parties, as opposed to the characteristics of electoral systems, as determinants of personal vote seeking. I argue that adoption of an individualistic or collective strategy depends largely on a party's access to and control over funding and patronage: generally, parties with good access to money and pork should adopt individualistic strategies, while parties with poor access to money and pork should adopt more collective strategies. In this paper, I explore the Brazilian case to test this claim. I test my claims at the national and district level, using multiple regression analysis. Furthermore, I explain how one party, the Workers' Party (PT), has overcome the incentives of the electoral system over the long run.
Translated title of the contribution | Incentives to Cultivate a Party Vote in Candidate-Centric Electoral Systems: Evidence from Brazil |
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Original language | Portuguese |
Pages (from-to) | 493-535 |
Number of pages | 43 |
Journal | Dados |
Volume | 40 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1997 |
Keywords
- Electoral system
- Party vote
- Worker's Party (PT)