Ciclos eleitorais e ideologia partidária: a dinâmica das despesas públicas municipais no Brasil à luz da teoria dos ciclos político-orçamentários

Abstract

The present dissertation has the general objective of analyzing the influence of the political–budget cycle and political–partisan ideology on the allocation pattern of expenditures of Brazilian local governments, in light of the Theory of Political Budget Cycles (TPBC). To achieve this objective, the study was structured into two scientific articles. The first article, entitled “Analysis of electoral cycles in the dynamics of municipal expenditures in Brazil in light of the Theory of Political–Budget Cycles”, investigated the dynamics of committed expenditures in Brazilian municipalities in electoral years, in light of the TPBC with Institutional Constraints. The sample comprised committed expenditures by function for 5,513 Brazilian municipalities over the period 1995 to 2021. The second article, entitled “Ideological–partisan influence on the allocation of municipal expenditures in Brazil in light of the Theory of Political Budget Cycles”, assessed the influence of the ideological orientation of political parties on municipal fiscal management. For this purpose, the sample consisted of committed expenditures by function for 5,562 municipalities, from 2001 to 2021. In both studies, a panel regression model with fixed effects and robust standard errors, clustered by municipal ID, was employed, complemented by GMM robustness checks (Arellano–Bond, 1991; Anderson–Hsiao, 1982). Data were obtained from the databases of Ipeadata, the National Treasury, the Superior Electoral Court, the Brazilian Institute of Economics of FGV (IBRE-FGV), and the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FIRJAN). The empirical results of the first study do not indicate the presence of statistically consistent PBC patterns in Brazilian municipalities specifically in electoral years. However, this evidence does not imply a rejection of the TPBC (Drazen & Eslava, 2006, 2010), since, in non-electoral periods, a systematic prioritization of expenditures with greater political visibility was observed. This finding suggests that the Brazilian institutional framework, characterized by a high degree of fiscal and regulatory oversight, operates as a disciplining mechanism on public managers’ behavior in electoral years, constraining explicit practices of budget manipulation. Additionally, the results indicate that municipal managers internalize and adapt to the prevailing institutional constraints during electoral periods. By contrast, in the three-year period preceding elections, a greater intensity in the recomposition of the budget structure was observed, with resources directed toward categories of higher political salience. This dynamic unfolds in an environment of relative decision-making flexibility, as evidenced by the magnitude of the coefficients associated with the lnDempTotal variable, which points to greater discretion in the allocation of public resources throughout the term-of-office cycle. At the theoretical level, these findings reinforce the robustness of the TPBC (Drazen & Eslava, 2010), while partially challenging the assumptions of the opportunistic model with rational expectations (Rogoff, 1990) by highlighting the relevance of expenditure composition, rather than only its aggregate level. In the second study, by incorporating the partisan ideological dimension, the results expand the explanatory scope of the TPBC. It was verified that ideological orientation influences the allocation of municipal expenditures in Brazil, albeit heterogeneously and without a standardized pattern across regions, in line with previous evidence in the national literature. This finding suggests that Brazilian multipartyism favors pragmatic fiscal management strategies, reducing the sharpness of traditional ideological distinctions, consistent with the notion of a “crisis of ideologies”. In this context, indications of strategic reorganization of expenditure composition over terms of office are observed, with resources directed toward items of greater visibility, thereby providing empirical support for the study’s central hypothesis