Do Smaller Cities Get More Pork?: Evidence from Brazil

• In Event: Politics in the Global South’s Small and Medium-Sized Cities

Abstract

In most low- and middle-income countries, cities do not collect enough tax revenue from their populations to fund the water, health, education and transportation infrastructure their citizens require. While funding may sometimes be available through automatic transfers or programs with clear eligibility criteria, infrastructure funding often depends upon the discretion of higher-level authorities. In this project, we examine what types of cities are better positioned to secure discretional funds for local infrastructure projects. Scholarship on Brazil and other countries has typically emphasized that funds typically flow to jurisdictions with core voters (controlled by aligned politicians), or those with significant numbers of swing voters. In this project, we emphasize an alternative predictor: city size. Mayors and city councilors in smaller cities have less own-source revenue available for infrastructure projects, so have stronger incentives to lobby for funds. Such infrastructure projects are also more likely to generate political returns for local politicians and their benefactors at higher tiers of government in smaller cities because the projects are more visible, and both credit-claiming and credit-attribution efforts are therefore more effective. We test this argument using an original dataset of ~31,000 individual budget amendments, or project-specific amendments national deputies can add to Brazilian budget legislation. We focus on the 2015-2019 period, when legislators had the authority to allocate projects to specific localities. Complementary data from social media and interviews allows for an evaluation of the mechanisms posited in the theory.

Authors

• Alison E. Post, University of California, Berkeley

• Isabella C. Montini, University of California, Berkeley