Lucio Renno

University of Brasília | UnB · Institute of Political Sciences

The central research finding of this article is that the standard policy feedback effects in the literature cannot alone explain the outcomes of the Brazilian Bolsa Familia program/Programa Bolsa Família (PBF). While conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have remained a resilient policy instrument in Brazil-newly elected officials did not dismantle, re...

When the number of observed elections is low, subnational data can be used to perform electoral forecasts. Turgeon and Rennó (2012) applied this solution and proposed three forecasting models to analyze Brazilian presidential elections (1994-2006). The models, adapted from forecasting models of American and French presidential elections, considers...

This paper analyzes how President Jair Bolsonaro’s attitudes and policies towards the covid-19 pandemic reverberated in the population as a way of exploring the microlevel congruence between voter and representative positions. We investigate popular support for Brazilian president positions denying the covid-19 pandemic, bringing together supply an...

Brazilian response to Covid-19: Populism, polarization and conflict Brazil has had, until October 2, 2020, 144,966 deaths by Covid-19, ranking second in the world, only trailing the USA. It has been classified as one of the five countries in which its main political leader downplayed the disease and the pandemic (Meyer B. Pandemic populism: an anal...

Some claim that an erosion of democracy is occurring worldwide. There are also questions on the scope of the crisis, which countries are affected, and how to reverse it. The Covid-19 pandemic may have fostered disagreements, deepened rifts, and contributed to the definitive crystallisation of the crisis, but it may also have engendered more moderat...

The new coronavirus pandemic established a strong exogenous shock. The losses are expected and already observed, presenting important questions about how politicians could insert themselves in an important game of dodging blame and claiming credit. The present paper aims to describe parliamentary positioning in both Brazilian legislative houses, by...

In Latin America’s new democracies, political parties and mass partisanship are not deeply entrenched, leaving many votes up for grabs during election campaigns. In a typical presidential election season, between one-quarter and one-half of all voters—figures unheard of in older democracies—change their voting intentions across party lines in the m...

This chapter discusses novel descriptive facts on the dynamics of vote choice during presidential election campaigns. Using all available panel data from Brazil and Mexico (plus one from Argentina), it estimates the amount of preference change that occurred in 10 election campaigns. Between any two panel waves, 17 to 45 percent of voters switched a...

This chapter demonstrates that the dynamics of vote choice described in the previous chapter are caused by the discussion and social ties described in Chapter 2. During campaigns, discussion with disagreeing partners tends to induce preference change in voters, while discussion only with agreeing partners reinforces vote intentions, causing prefere...

This chapter assesses elite behavior, demonstrating that clientelistic party machines try to pay off hubs — that is, voters with large political discussion networks who frequently engage in persuasion. In seeking to buy votes, the best strategy a party can pursue is to target citizens who are well-connected opinion leaders in informal networks. The...

This chapter fills a major gap in the literature on Latin American politics by providing descriptive information about the region's political discussion networks. It reports the absolute and relative prevalence of political discussion — compared to other countries and to other intermediaries — in Brazil, Mexico, and eight other Latin American count...

This concluding chapter summarizes the findings from the previous chapters. Seen collectively, the findings paint a somewhat complicated picture of democratic citizenship in Latin America. On the one hand, the high rates of vote switching during campaigns, often as a result of informal discussion, reflect an open-mindedness and a responsiveness to...

In Latin America's new democracies, political parties and mass partisanship are not deeply entrenched, leaving many votes up for grabs during election campaigns. In a typical presidential election season, between one-quarter and one-half of all voters change their voting intentions across party lines in the months before election day. Advancing a n...

This chapter examines the relationship between political discussion and the geography of the vote. Social influences induce many citizens to cast votes that differ from the ones they would have cast if they lived elsewhere. The chapter considers neighborhood effects on vote choice in two Brazilian cities. Nearly two-thirds of discussion partners in...

This chapter explores the implications of horizontal intermediation for the normative issues of the quality and equity of political voice. Because its monetary costs are virtually nil, the realm of horizontal intermediation could be a haven for under-resourced and marginalized groups. The analyses of data from the panel studies and the Comparative...

This chapter provides an overview of the nature of voting behavior and election outcomes in Latin America. Armed only with vertical understandings of political intermediation, research on Latin American voters “conceives the citizen as an independently self-contained decision-maker,” ignoring voters' embeddedness in peer networks. For this reason,...

This chapter extends the discussion of the previous chapter and focuses on larger subnational units. It illustrates how political discussion explains the geography of the vote across states and entire subnational regions. Political discussion during the Brazil 20144 and Mexico 2006 campaigns drew many voters toward the political leanings of their s...

The 2018 Brazilian elections saw the rise to power of Jair Bolsonaro, yet another conservative politician who won an election in recent years. What were the ideological underpinnings of the Bolsonaro vote? Was his support based exclusively on resentment toward the Workers’ Party? This article uses a unique public opinion dataset, the 2018 Brazilian...

How do institutional contexts condition debates’ effects on vote choice during electoral campaigns? The U.S. literature suggests that debates’ effect on vote choice is minimal at best, reinforcing voters’ prior convictions more often than converting or activating them. There have been very few tests of the effect of debates in newer democracies, ho...

We argue that most survey measures of partisanship are misclassifying many respondents as nonpartisans. Common wordings, especially those in major cross-national surveys, violate well-established best practices in questionnaire design by reading aloud a nonpartisanship option. This is akin, we show, to the taboo of inviting no-opinion responses. Co...

The speed and actions that bills face in legislatures vary immensely, but we do not have a comprehensive framework to analyse legislative durations. Moreover, the absence of data detailing legislative activities and durations in distinct stages of legislative processes hinders analysis. This article presents a framework for analysing legislative de...

The article investigates the impact of local policies on human development indicators in Brazilian municipalities. This is an attempt to investigate the role of the legislative branch in reducing inequality and poverty through budget amendments, usually seen in derogatory form as pork barrel politics. We assess the effect of pork on municipalities...

Conditional cash transfer programs may boost the electoral fortunes of incumbents among beneficiary groups, but do they also influence recipient attitudes toward state legitimacy? This article examines the relationship between Brazil's Bolsa Família program and recipients’ sense of the Brazilian state's political legitimacy, from 2007 to 2014. Usin...

While corruption is widely disapproved of, some corrupt politicians continue to win elections. We tackle this paradox by examining the effects of malfeasance scandals in politicians’ behavior. In particular, we focus on their campaign finance strategies and career choices. We explore these issues empirically with an original dataset that includes a...

RESUMO Neste artigo são testadas diferentes hipóteses derivadas da literatura especializada nacional e internacional sobre o efeito da estratificação e mobilidade social nas atitudes políticas e seus atributos no Brasil. São usados dados do Barômetro das Américas, rodada de 2012, pesquisa de opinião pública domiciliar com amostra representativa da...

What happens to partisanship when a party undergoes rapid and visible elite-led changes that dilute its traditional brand? We address scholarly debates on the stability of mass partisanship by analyzing the consequences of the major brand change (marked by policy moderation and scandal) experienced by the leftist Brazilian Workers Party (PT) betwee...

What happens to partisanship when a party undergoes rapid and visible elite-led changes that dilute its traditional brand? We address scholarly debates on the stability of mass partisanship by analyzing the consequences of the major brand change (marked by policy moderation and scandal) experienced by the leftist Brazilian Workers Party (PT) betwee...

In this article we explore how the management of governing coalitions andattributes of the dynamics of the conflict between and within governing and opposition coalitions affect obstructionist movements in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies from 1991 to 2010. Obstructionist movements are operationalized by the percentage of monthly roll call votes r...

This article seeks to understand multiparty cabinets in presidential systems. The article applies theories developed for parliamentary systems to the case of Brazil and uses ministerial endorsements of executive bills to test whether multiparty cabinets are anchored in an office or a policy-seeking compact. The analysis shows that participation in...

Who, within the Cabinet, participates in elaborating the government’s legislative agenda, and why? How has the role of ministers in elaborating the legislative agenda changed over time? In this paper, we discuss the structure of legislative bill cosponsorship networks among cabinet members in Brazil. Are ministers serious participants in the elabor...

This article addresses central issues in multiparty presidential systems: the functioning of legislative coalitions and the dynamics of legislative conflict. Since electoral competition has elements of both positive-sum (increase in common support) and zero-sum (exact division of the support) qualities, lawmaking in coalitional systems presents uni...

In this paper we investigate the patterns of electoral volatility, at the individual level, in the 2010 Brazilian presidential elections. We explain variation in vote intention before the first round between candidates José Serra, Marina Silva, and Dilma Rousseff. A special emphasis is given to the effects of perceptions of corruption and abortion,...

We assess the effects of individual, partisan, and institutional dimensions of conflict on the duration and outcome of the legislative processes in the Brazilian Congress. Our analysis indicates that legislative approval is more likely when the size of the governing coalition is either relatively small or extremely large and least likely when the c...

Neste texto, explora-se como o gerenciamento da coalizão de governo e os atributos da dinâmica do conflito entre e intracoalizões, tanto de governo quanto de oposição, afetaram a incidência de movimentos de obstrução na Câmara dos Deputados de 1991 a 2010. Estes movimentos são operacionalizados pela porcentagem de votações nominais mensais relativa...

A teoria do realinhamento vem ganhando força como chave explicativa dos desdobramentos eleitorais ocorridos no Brasil recentemente. O fenômeno que se edifica após a vitória eleitoral de Lula em 2006 expressa a ideia de uma conversão de blocos de eleitores, determinando uma agenda de longo prazo da qual nem mesmo a oposição ao governo consegue escap...

Why run for reelection when the logic and incentives of the political system leave no doubt that running for other offices is a better option? This paper focuses on the factors that influence both the choice of career and the electoral success of those who run for reelection and those who attempt to obtain other offices, using Brazil as a case stud...

This report presents sample characteristics and summary statistics from the Brazilian Electoral Panel Study (BEPS) project. The survey, composed of three waves, was conducted in Brazil in 2010, a presidential election year, and is composed of 4,611 interviews with 2,669 voting-age Brazilians.

A diverse and growing literature ties legislative professionalization and power to career paths. In particular, higher rates of reelection and longer legislative careers should produce more professional, competent, and high-quality legislatures. Legislators have more incentives to strengthen their own institution when they intend to remain there fo...

The use of election forecasting models is common practice in the US and other established democracies like France and the UK. However, not much work has been done in the area for more recent democracies. Forecasting election results in recently (re)democratized countries poses a serious challenge, given the very few observations of the dependent va...

The different participatory experiences emerging in Brazil during the decade of the 1990s came together, as Tatagiba has argued, in turning the country into "a hotbed of innovative management experiences". One outstanding experience is the Participatory Budgeting Orçamento Participativo (OP) Program, which over the course of the years has been the...

This paper analises the determinants of vote for Dilma Rousseff in the first and second rounds of the 2010 Brazilian presidential elections, based on various political, economic and social indicators. The study tests the traditional hypotheses about vote choice in Brazil, such as sociotropic economic voting, party identification, government evaluat...

Using an innovative databank, this article conducts validity and reliability tests for various measures of the concept of interpersonal trust. The Brazilian round of the Americas Barometer 2008 included different measures of the interpersonal trust concept, allowing the evaluation of its internal consistency and external validity. After a battery o...

Resumo: O índice de volatilidade eleitoral tem sido usado como um dos principais indicadores de institucionalização dos sistemas partidários em países de democracia recente. Contudo, os estudos comparados usualmente analisam esse índice num nível de agregação dos dados muito elevado, avaliando sua variação com base nas médias nacionais. Sob tal per...

O artigo busca caracterizar o eleitor de Lula em 2006. O objetivo é analisar os fatores que diferenciam o voto em Lula do voto no PT, de modo a esclarecer quem são os eleitores que compõem a maioria que Lula construiu ao longo de seu governo e que não demonstra preferência por seu partido. Conclui-se que o lulista se assemelha ao eleitor não-alinha...

We know that Brazilian citizens, just like those living in other democracies of the world, know very little about politics. We know less, however, about the consequences of political ignorance on the democratic process? Some scholars argue that the lack of political information has minimal effect of people's political attitudes and behaviors. Other...

In this paper we bring together institutional, contextual, and behavioral perspectives in a comprehensive model that explores determinants of executive and legislative approval based on economic performance in Brazil and Chile. Our main question is, do voters attribute responsibility for the state of the economy to their representatives in the Legi...

In this paper we bring together institutional, contextual, and behavioral perspectives in a comprehensive model that explores determinants of executive and legislative approval based on economic performance in Brazil and Chile. Our main question is, do voters attribute responsibility for the state of the economy to their representatives in the Legi...

O artigo discute as estratégias dos eleitores que transferiram seus votos para Lula no segundo turno das eleições presidenciais de 2006 a fim de testar a hipótese de que esses eleitores empregaram uma nova forma de voto estratégico no primeiro turno das eleições: o voto estratégico punitivo. Argumentamos que esse tipo de comportamento eleitoral foi...

Using an original, six-wave panel survey conducted in two cities, we find that 1) mass partisanship in Brazil shares important similarities with mass partisan identification in developed countries, and 2) that for many citizens, such identification is a social identity. Our findings are surprising given the relative newness of Brazil’s party system...

In evaluating the year of 2009 in Brazilian politics, this article focuses on what was the main political event of the year: the reform of Congress' Provisional Measures (MPVs) evaluation procedures. Through a very peculiar instrument of institutional reform, Michel Temer, President of the Chamber of Deputies, offered an alternative interpretation...

In evaluating the year of 2009 in Brazilian politics, this article focuses on what was the main political event of the year: the reform of Congress' Provisional Measures (MPVs) evaluation procedures. Through a very peculiar instrument of institutional reform, Michel Temer, President of the Chamber of Deputies, offered an alternative interpretation...

Why run for reelection when the logic and incentives of the political system leaves no doubt that running for other offices is a better option? This paper focuses on the factors that influence both career choice as well as electoral success of those who run for reelection and those who attempt other offices using Brazil as a case-study. It is argue...

Partisan theories of political economy expect that bondholders will panic with the election of a left-wing presidential candidate. The latter seems to be what happened in Brazil in the 2002 presidential elections. However, quantitative analysis of perceptions of sovereign credit risk in Argentine, Brazilian, Mexican, and Venezuelan presidential ele...

This article explores the impact of being a Family Grant Program beneficiary in vote choice for President in the 2006 elections and in Lula da Silva's government evaluations. Therefore, the article contributes to the growing literature on how social programs affect voting behaviour in Brazil. However, differently from all other studies, we use indi...

Despite its centrality in current and past political developments, scholars know little about the motivations underlying split-ticket voting in Latin America. We consider the case of Brazil, one of the region's most notorious cases of “permanent divided government” and split-ticket voting. We find the rate of split-ticket voting to be extremely hig...

How does vote intention in presidential elections vary according to the economic conditions of a country, especially indicators of the financial market? Does the state of the economy, both its fundamentals as well as capital market, affect variation in candidates’ percentage of vote intention in national polls? This paper tests how economic indicat...

What are the beliefs and values of Brazilian journalists? Results form a unique public opinion survey with Brazilian journalists, and the use of data from the entire population collected through the Americas Barometer project provides initial responses to this question. Results indicate very positive findings. The main finding is that journalists a...

The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of can...

Corruption was a central theme of the Brazilian 2006 elections, both at the Executive and Legislative levels. According to our data, more than 100 Federal Deputies, or 1 in 5 in the 52nd Legislature (2003-2007) were mentioned by the media in relation to some scandal. The focus of this paper is how Federal Deputies involved in corruption scandals fa...

Corruption was a central theme of the Brazilian 2006 elections, both at the Executive and Legislative levels. According to our data, more than 100 Federal Deputies, or 1 in 5 in the 52nd Legislature (2003-2007) were mentioned by the media in relation to some scandal. The focus of this paper is how Federal Deputies involved in corruption scandals fa...

This article examines how institutional change in the use of extraordinary legislation affects delegation of power and unilateral action in new democracies. From 1988 to 2001, Brazilian presidents were able to reissue decrees indefinitely and thus had substantial legislative power. In 2001, Congress amended the constitution so as to restrict the pr...

This article compares the determinants of electoral success in two consecutive Brazilian legislative elections, 1998 and 2002. There is a clear difference between both periods that renders the comparison especially interesting. In 1998 the incumbent president was running for reelection whereas in 2002 it was an open seat contest. We hypothesize tha...

The present study was carried out with 2499 residents/voters of Juiz de Fora city/MG along March 2002, pre-electoral period. Our study aimed to correlate interpersonal confidence variables with civic engagement. Besides that we also pretended to verify the bidimensionality of the interpersonal confidence concept. We found that interpersonal confide...

The article shows the impact of corruption scandals on the Brazilian voter’s choice in the 2006 Presidential election and it analyses if those individuals who have considered corruption the main Brazilian problem also did not vote for Lula. The article evaluates if and how the retrospective, ideological and partisan elements have influence on votin...

This article tests whether there were race, gender, and income-related biases in political participation and distribution of political information during the 2002 Brazilian elections. The importance of political information is not assumed, but verified empirically. The first step was thus to confirm which types of information more clearly affected...

This article tests whether there were race, gender, and income-related biases in political participation and distribution of political information during the 2002 Brazilian elections. The importance of political information is not assumed, but verified empirically. The first step was thus to confirm which types of information more clearly affected...

This paper explores the differences and similarities between the electoral systems in Brazil and Colombia and how it affects Brazilian incumbent Federal Deputies' and Colombian Diputados' political career choices and electoral success. The main argument is that even though both electoral systems are, in general terms, quite distinct, they appear to...

The paper describes the main characteristics of the 2006 Brazilian Presidential elections. It explores two defining traits of this elections: the interplay between how retrospective economic voting and views towards corruption affected vote volatility and the final result of the election. The paper concludes by pointing out implications of the curr...

Do civil society organizations have a didactic role in instructing its members about politics that extrapolates the immediate issues of interest of that organization? Most of the literature, especially that on the role of the participatory budgeting process of the Workers' Party in Brazil, claims that such meetings are an opportunity structure for...

In new democracies party systems are often young, so partisan cues and roots in the electorate tend to be weak. The results, in many instances, include volatile campaigns with comparatively high degrees of short-term preference change among voters. We explore the mechanisms of voter volatility and, more broadly, the ways in which citizens learn abo...

In the past 10 years, Brazil implemented several institutional reforms that directly affected national and subnational governments' influence on budgetary spending. The goal of most of these changes was to increase transparency in the use of public funds and to increase voters' ability to hold politicians accountable. Two such changes de-serve to b...

This article explores the relationship between macroeconomic indicators, financial markets, and voting intentions in the 1994, 1998, and 2002 Brazilian Presidential elections. Several hypotheses concerning the relationship between economic performance and politics were tested using a data set containing aggregate measures of self-reported preferenc...

The relationship between elite behavior and mass preferences is in the essence of discussions about representative democracy. However, very little is known about who influences whom and how long it takes for such influence to be felt. This article presents results from a time-series dataset that allows us to verify the relationship between the mood...

for their very helpful comments and suggestions, and to Robin Best and Rado Iliev for research assistance and useful discussions. Mershon acknowledges support from NSF grant SES-0339877. Heller acknowledges support from NSF SES-0339920.

The emerging literature on executive decree authority has generated important insights, but it has tended to select on the dependent variable (decrees), rather than view decrees as one of several possible ways that presidents can initiate policies. This article examines the conditions under which presidents resort to extraordinary rather than ordin...

The main purpose of the paper is to test a model that explains varia-tion in the ratio of expenditure with personnel in Brazilian states from 1965 to 1994. The independent variables include indicators of the political environment in the dis-tinct states, such as number of veto players and level of political competition. Fur-thermore, variables that...

This dissertation has two main goals. The first is to test how environments with distinct political, historical and institutional characteristics affect voters' ability to obtain information about candidates in legislative elections. In broader terms, this is an exploration of the correlates of learning about politics. More specifically, the emphas...

This article contributes to the study of legislative organisation by contrasting the process of committee chair selection in two distinct institutional environments. The goal is to verify how party loyalty affects the distribution of committee chairmanship in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, focusing on two distinct historical periods. The main h...