Political Support for Sale: Cabinet Appointments and Public Expenditures in Brazil

In multiparty presidential regimes, the head of the Executive manages a heterogeneous political base through a series of instruments. Among these tools, the use of patronage in appointments for governmental positions and the deployment of pork barrel to please congressional representatives have been highlighted by the literature as the glue that holds together multiparty coalitions. However, current studies neglect the role of politicians as active actors in multiparty presidential regimes in channeling resources to their constituencies and parties when holding a cabinet position. This paper contributes to the literature by merging these two tools of coalition maintenance. We analyze a complimentary strategy that benefits party leaders in the coalition by studying the relation of top-level cabinet appointments and grant transfers to subnational governments. Using data from Brazil, a paradigmatic case of multiparty presidential regime, we intend to answer the following question: Are ministries in Brazil being used to please ministers’ constituency and party allies? Using social networking analysis and econometrics for the period between 2011 and 2014, we provide evidence that ministers use their position to transfer funding to districts governed by fellow party members and not to their own political strongholds following a partisan pattern instead of a personal one.

Executive cabinet; Brazil; unrestricted expenses; patterns of expenditure; State-level analysis