This thesis investigates how the incentives stemming from the electoral arena influence the behaviour of legislators in Brazil. Or, to put it differently, resorting to the now classic expression first popularised by Mayhew, the purpose of this research is to tease out the effects of the electoral connection on Brazilian legislators’ behaviour. Legislative elections in Brazil are held under an open-list proportional representation system. Theoretically, such a set of rules leads to intraparty competition and therefore campaigns heavily centred on individual candidates. A strong electoral connection, then, would come as a consequence. How, though, this electoral connection affects the behaviour of legislators has seldom been tested. The general contention guiding this inquiry consists in considering that the Brazilian OLPR system allows for the creation of several different incentives that impact how legislators behave. Overall, three essential dimensions of the legislative behaviour are studied: the stance towards the executive, policy orientation and interlegislator cooperative relationship. The task of testing this hypothesis is carried out by looking at the Rio de Janeiro City Council (RJCC). The focus, then, is on the local, municipal level – a subject hitherto largely overlooked, in contrast with the Brazilian National Congress, which has been the topic of numerous works in the past two decades. The analysis, based on multiple regressions, covers the fourteen-year period between 1997 and 2010.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:626650 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Marques, F. M. D. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1418413/ |
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