Does Legislative Work Help Reelection? Ambition, Reelection and Legislative Performance at the Subnational Level in Brazil.

Abstract

This paper investigates career patterns of state legislators in Brazil and the effects of their legislative performance on their probability of reelection. In fact, we aim at exploring the impact of approving new relevant legislation on legislators’ electoral success. We applied statistical techniques investigating data from three electoral cycles at subnational level in Brazil, developing an analytical map about patterns of legislative careers. In one hand, our main empirical findings suggest that the majority of state legislators run for reelection (static ambition) and those that decide to do so are successfully reelected, which are very similar to what happen at the national legislative counterpart. This empirical finding might be associated to the degree of institutional similarity between state assemblies and national Congress, which reinforces the idea that endogenous institutional aspects may have an effect on electoral performance. On the other hand, legislative performance inside state legislatures provides a positive and statistically significant effect on reelection.Finally, we found a consistent and positive effect of legislative production on the probability of reelection, with different patterns for 2002 and 2006 elections. While in 2002 voters tended to reelected legislators that presented only “irrelevant” bills, in 2006 the “relevant” bills turned to be significant. It suggests that Brazilian median voter has moved at the subnational level in the direction of universalistic material goods, such as budgeting and public policies, rather than particularistic symbolic goods, like changing a street’s name.