Join us for the upcoming session of the Quantitative Social Sciences Seminars (QSSS), where we spotlight transformative approaches to addressing contemporary challenges through the lens of empirical research. In this session, Lucio Rennó (University of Brasília) presents a paper co-authored with Ivan C. Jucá ( University of Minnesota) and Marcus C. B. de Melo, in which they explore an enduring puzzle: while corruption is widely unpopular, corrupt politicians are popular and routinely reelected to public office. Previous studies have shown that federal deputies in Brazil who were tainted by malfeasance scandals were more likely to lose their reelection bids. However, a recent study found that the negative electoral effects of scandals were nullified for those who could spend large sums of money on their reelection campaigns. This generated a straightforward policy implication: imposing campaign spending limits will improve accountability. In 2015, Brazil passed a sweeping reform bill that did just that, imposing spending limits. We test the effect of this reform on electoral accountability by comparing the 2014 and 2018 Brazilian legislative elections, before and after the reform, using regression analysis and a diff-in-diff. We show that the reform worked: imposing spending limits improved accountability.
About the presenter
Lucio Rennó is an Associate Professor at the Political Science Institute of the University of Brasília, Brazil. He currently serves as the Dean for Postgraduate Research at the University of Brasília. His research focuses on institutions and political behavior. He has published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Electoral Studies. He was the president of the Brazilian Social and Economic Planning Agency (CODEPLAN), a research institution of the Federal District Government.