Subnational Authoritarian Politics and Policy Choices in the Brazilian State of Bahia. Preliminary Version

Transcription

1 Subnational Authoritarian Politics and Policy Choices in the Brazilian State of Bahia Preliminary Version Celina Souza Research Fellow at the Center for Human Resources (CRH), Federal University of Bahia, Brazil Prepared for delivery at XXI IPSA World Congress of Political Science July Santiago, Chile

2 Subnational Authoritarian Politics and Policy Choices in the Brazilian State of Bahia Celina Souza Research Fellow at the Center for Human Resources (CRH), Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) Abstract After two decades of the return of democracy, of competitive and popular elections for the executive and despite improvements in the country s social indicators, in some states party politics has been less competitive, political elites made up during the military regime continued to gain successive electoral victories and improvements on social indicators are slower than the national average. This is the case of the Brazilian state of Bahia, in which the executive, the legislature and the summit of the judiciary have been controlled by an authoritarian elite with ties to the military regime until the last state election, when a candidate from the opposition achieved an unexpected victory. The paper explores the dynamics of continuity and change in Bahia s electoral politics and policies and poses two questions. Firstly, why and how an authoritarian elite ruled Bahia both during the authoritarian and the democratic regimes. Secondly, why the electorate took the decision to overthrow the party from office in the 2006 election. The paper makes two claims. Firstly, the ruling of an authoritarian elite did not rely on the provision of private goods alone but rather on a complex combination of private and public goods. Secondly, the victory of the opposition in 2006 cannot be explained by one rationale alone, but by the convergence of national, state, and local political dynamics and policies. Introduction * Two decades since the return to democracy, several competitive and popular elections for the executive and improvements in the country s social indicators, in particular in basic education and health care, in some Brazilian states party politics have been less competitive and improvements in social indicators have been slower than the national average. Furthermore, in some states political elites established or consolidated during the military regime continued to gain successive electoral victories both for the state executive and legislature. This has been the tale of the state of Bahia in Brazil s Northeast until the 2006 state election. Although the state of Bahia is used as a narrative in which the social and political promises of redemocratization have not being reached, it is not a peculiar case. Not only have other Brazilian states experienced low competitive elections but they have also kept political elites consolidated during the military regime in power. 1 In other states the electorate has also kept * Support for this research is provided by the CNPq. Part of this paper was prepared for the project A political economy analysis of public sector management in Brazilian sub-national states sponsored by DFID and coordinated by Lee Alston, Carlos Pereira, Bernardo Mueller, and Marcus A. Melo. 1 Borges (2008) created an index of electoral dominance to measure electoral competition in Brazilian states. According to this index, in the states of Amazonas, Bahia, Ceará, Goiás, Paraíba, and Maranhão party 2

3 politically active politicians with close ties to the authoritarian regime and there are welldocumented studies showing similarities in countries such as Mexico and Argentina. In Brazil, however, strikingly but not surprisingly, most of these political elites lost ground in electoral politics in the 2000s. The paper explores the dynamics of continuity and change in subnational electoral politics and policies. It discusses some strategies pursued by Bahia s authoritarian elite for remaining in power and those pursued by the opposition for overthrowing the PFL (now DEM) from its hegemonic position. 2 Although Brazil is a highly centralized federation regarding the rules governing democratic institutions and public policies at all levels, there is strong evidence that subnational institutions are relatively less institutionalized than federal ones and that they are still moving towards rule enforcement. Furthermore, Brazilian states have shown different political and policy outcomes among them despite the uniformity of rules, hence demanding inquires different from those focusing at the national level. The paper poses two questions. Firstly, why and how politicians affiliated to the PFL managed to rule Bahia both during the authoritarian and the democratic regimes. Secondly, why the electorate took the decision to overthrow the party from office in the 2006 election. The paper makes two claims. Firstly, the ruling of an authoritarian elite for several decades did not rely on clientelist mechanisms alone but rather on a complex combination of private and public goods, the latter to upgrade the state s economic performance and to control fiscal expenditure and the former to distribute benefits to local and state-level politicians. Secondly, the victory of the opposition in 2006 cannot be explained by one rationale alone, but by the convergence of national, state, and local political dynamics and policies. On the political realm, the PFL s isolation from the federal government coalition, hence from federal benefits, have contributed to the party s defeat. On the policy realm, given the size of the poor electorate in Bahia, PFL s policies based on discretionary and distributive policies mainly to rural areas and poor communities now compete with federalized social policies, designed as universal or clear targeted, hence more redistributive. With the federalization of social policies voters have more policy choices at their disposal and an opportunity to reward or punish parties, candidates, and incumbents based on their policies. However, and despite the recent overthrown of the PFL by the electorate, it is still early to suppose that Bahia s political system is now democratized. Although mechanisms of checks-and-balances and the oversight of the executive by other institutions are improving, the state cannot be yet labeled as highly institutionalized but it is rather in a transitional phase. Electoral support for the PFL is provided mainly by the electorate living in small and less urbanized municipalities and with lower literacy rates. Although they have traditionally supported Bahia s authoritarian political elite they have been slowly changing their electoral preferences since the late 1990s. But why did this happen? The defeat of this political group competition has been low and only one party achieved electoral success in a period equal to or over three elections. The state of São Paulo has also been governed by the same party for three consecutive terms but electoral completion is high. 2 Although the PFL (Party of the Liberal Front) had its name recently changed to DEM (Democrats), I use the former because Brazilians are still used to it. 3

4 in 2006 for the state executive can be partially explained as a result of a combination of local, state, and national political dynamics and the consolidation of federalized social policies. The latter created incentives for the poorest to switch their vote preference to PFL s major contender in the state the PT (Workers Party) a party seen as committed to income transfers to the poor and to the improvement of their social conditions through redistributive policies. Furthermore, federalized social policies have been designed as are either universal (e.g. health care) or have clear targets (Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer program, and retirement entitlements, for example), whereas PFL s main social policy to small, less urbanized and poorer municipalities and communities is a distributive and discretionary policy. In this paper I also investigate further other factors which might have also influenced voters to abandon the PFL s ship, in particular the functioning of check-and-balance institutions. The choice to further the understanding of voters preferences in Bahia beyond the connection between voters, elected officials, and policies as I did elsewhere (Souza, 2009) is based on the assumption that (1) a wide variety of preferences operate simultaneously and (2) the redemocratization of subnational institutions does not necessary follow the same timing and practices as national institutions, even in highly uniform countries as regards institutions and rules such as Brazil. Continuity and change in electoral politics can be analyzed through several lenses. One of them is to focus on the territorial electoral impact of a given policy. One can investigate territorial-level voting by aggregating the electorate according to the socio-demographic characteristics of their municipalities in association with policy preferences. If one associates the design and the management of PFL s lasting discretionary policy with those of federalized social programs, with a more redistributive feature, one can label PFL s policies as traditional and federalized policies as modern. Research using this association, both quantitatively and qualitatively, has shown the existence of a complementarity between modern and traditional politics and policies. Gibson (1997), for instance, has convincingly shown how populist parties in Mexico and Argentina have been able to build a national-level strategy based on this complementarity, which he labels metropolitan and peripheral sub-coalitions, to overcome constraints on the adoption of policy reforms. Following Gibson s typology, Souza (2007) has discussed the policy of hard budget constraints in three Brazilian states and shown that this policy was made possible because in some states their political coalitions were able to keep their territorial bases of electoral support both in the metropolitan and in the peripheral sub-coalitions. Souza (1997) has also analyzed the strategy of Bahia s elite for consolidating and furthering the policy of industrialization and economic modernization in Bahia by isolating the bureaucracies operating planning and finance portfolios from those in charge of social policies. Although there is strong evidence showing this complementarity in certain issues, this paper analyzes a case of competition between political parties - the PFL and the PT and in social policies in a given territory the state of Bahia - where they have been sponsoring and implementing different formats of social policies: on one hand, the PFL, making use of distributive and discretionary policies to small, poor, and less urbanized municipalities, and, on the other, federalized and redistributive social programs designed as universal or clearly targeted. 4

5 When continuity and change in electoral politics and policies occur in authoritarian subnational settings within a democratic regime such as Bahia the analytical framework becomes more complex. 3 Analysis of this kind has recently become the focus of political science scholarship in Latin American countries, in particular Mexico and Argentina. New avenues, however, have been opened by Gibson s (2004; 2005) latest works, drawing mainly from the contributions of Sidney Tarrow and his associates. This paper relies on two of Gibson s contributions. One is the acknowledgement that subnational authoritarianism in democratic regimes is not a local issue but an outcome of broader dynamics of national territorial governance. As it is going to be shown below, the making and the survival of an authoritarian political elite for over several decades was a product of national-state-local political dynamics. The second is the discussion on how subnational politics move from authoritarianism to a transition to a democratic regime. Gibson (2004) claims that subnational democratization depends upon national institutions, either parties or governments. In the case of Bahia national parties or government did not play a direct role as they did in the cases analyzed by Gibson - the provinces of Oaxacan in Mexico and Santiago del Estero in Argentina. I argue that the electorate changed their electoral preference more influenced by the consolidation of federalized social policies, launched by different national governing coalitions, and by a national political coalition which left the PFL at bay. Given that the political, financial, and economic situation of the state of Bahia is quite different from the two cases analyzed by Gibson, the analysis of Bahia s authoritarianism and its current transition towards more democratic and transparent regime might contribute to further Gibson s analytical framework and his proposed two models of subnational democratization: party-led and center-led. Continuity and change in electoral politics and policies in authoritarian subnational units of a nationally democratic regime can also be discussed through the lens of three other theoretical frameworks: clientelism, political machine, and electoral targeting. For reasons of space and because the findings of this paper challenge, to a certain extent, part of this literature, I do not discuss it here. Despite the importance of subnational politics and policies in a federal and redemocratized country, scholarly work on state politics, institutions and policies after redemocratization are in their infancy in Brazil in comparison to national and local politics and policies. Only very recently scholars have started to look at the states in such a way that can contribute to a cumulative research agenda. 4 Filling this research gap is important, in particular for testing institutional hypotheses given that the states in Brazil are characterized by a high level of institutional and policy uniformity but also by different outcomes as regards electoral, political and policy results. 5 This paper goes beyond previous studies by discussing the 3 For a throughout review of the literature on subnational authoritarianism in nationally democratic regimes and territorial politics see Gibson (2004; 2005) and for a review of the literature on democratization studies, see Whitehead (1998). 4 Diniz s (1982) pioneering work on the political machine of a state governor of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s did not open the way for further inquires until the late 1990s. 5 If there are differences in political processes and policy results, a study by Sátyro (2006) using different statistical techniques showed that as regards social spending there are no differences among the states, meaning, that variables such as ideology, party affiliation, electoral competition, coalition governments, previous policies and social, demographic and economic conditions do not make any significant difference in the patterns of 5

6 possible reasons for the change in the pattern of voter preferences among the poorest in an electoral district of large magnitude the state of Bahia by confronting distinctive features of social policies. It also makes an attempt to link the role played by subnational elites and federal institutions and policies, as well as the role of federal-state-local political dynamics in transitional polities such as Bahia. 6 The discussion below might also contribute to further the research agenda on subnational politics, on the electoral effects of social policies, on the functioning of subnational democratic institutions and on the national-centered literature on democratization. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 analyzes the socioeconomic and political contexts of the state of Bahia in recent decades. Section 2 presents and overview of the functioning of democratic institutions. Section 3 analyzes state-local political dynamics. Section 4 discusses the role of state-led distributive and federal-led redistributive policies in the overthrown of an authoritarian political elite from the control of state and local politics. Section 5 discusses other institutions and factors which may have had an influence on the party s 2006 electoral defeat. The final part concludes. The state of Bahia: Socioeconomic and political contexts Socioeconomic background As it also happens in several developing countries, the trajectory of Bahia s socioeconomic performance presents a paradox: since the 1970s Bahia has been recovering from a long period of economic stagnation which started at the end of the 19 th century, to reach the 6 th position in the states ranking of GDP, a position maintained ever since, whereas social indicators have lagged behind: in 2000, Bahia ranked 22 nd on its Human Development Index (HDI) and in 2003 it ranked 17 th on GDP per capita. Table 1 displays how Bahia is below the national average in every indicator. Table 1 Bahia and Brazil: Socioeconomic indicators Indicator Bahia Brazil Poverty rate (2000) Income inequality index (income of the richest 10% / income of the poorest 40%) (2000) Illiteracy rate (population > 15 years old) (2007) Rate of urban households with sanitation (2007) GDP per capita (in R$ of 2006) 4,111 7,530 Sources: IBGE ( Ipeadata ( If one takes the human development index by municipality (HDI-M - Human Development Index-Municipality), although Bahia has advanced two positions in the last decade, its municipalities still register one of the lowest positions in the ranking, 22 nd, meaning that social spending in Brazilian states. This is because, I argue, of the high degree of federalization of social policies in Brazil. 6 Mccoy and Stroupe (2001) suggest that there is an endogenous and ambivalent relationship between political elites and federal institutions generally neglected in studies of federalism. 6

7 municipalities of 21 states are better positioned and only five are worse than Bahia. This applies to all HDI-M sub-indicators: income per capita, literacy, and longevity. In order to advance the knowledge on Bahia politics, it is also important to show its demographic pattern. This is because Bahia still has a high rural population as compared to other states (Table 2). Furthermore, Bahia has only one city, except Salvador, the state capital, with more than 500,000 inhabitants, Feira de Santana. Indeed, 309 of Bahia s 417 municipalities have between and inhabitants and only 11 between and inhabitants ( Table 2 - Bahia: Urban and rural populations, Total population Urban Rural Urbanization rate - Bahia (%) Urbanization rate Brazil (%) ,867,991 13,070,250 7,016,770 8,772,348 4,851,221 4,297, Sources: Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano ( and IBGE ( On the economic realm, however, Bahia is pointed out as an economic success. Bahia s economy was, in 1975, strongly concentrated on agricultural activities (30.7%) and the manufacture of intermediate industrial goods accounted only for 14.7%. In 2005, however, the former represented 10.3% of the GDP and the latter 36.1%, being the state s main economic activity. Financial activities, strong in the 19 th century, represented close to 15% in the 1990s and have been declining steadily, reaching 3.3% in The state is also loosing position in services, from 8.3% in 1975 to 6.2% in These figures show the success of a policy of leveraging the state s economic position through industrialization. Freeing Bahia from economic stagnation is a rich and interesting tale but beyond the objectives of this paper. The success of the strategy to manufacture capital-intensive intermediate goods and lately a car manufacture can be seen in the state s GDP as compared to other states in the Northeast (Table 3). This strategy is responsible for GDP s positive performance since the late 1970s, most of the times above the national average. 7 Table 3 Northeast: GDP participation, 2001 Bahia Sergipe Alagoas Pernambuco Paraíba Rio Grande do Norte Ceará Piauí Maranhão , Bahia is also appointed as one of the most successful cases of fiscal adjustment. It is important to note that despite implementing a severe fiscal adjustment after 1997, which involved several privatizations and a reduction in payroll expenditure, the PFL won its least contended victory, in 1998, as discussed elsewhere (Souza, 2007). Summing up, Bahia is a state in which a less uneven distribution of social (collective) goods, both territorially and socially, has not yet come close to the expectations brought about by redemocratization, but it is a case of economic success as compared to other Brazilian states 7 Data on economic and social indicators of Bahia are available at 7

8 and since the late 1990s it is the 6 th largest GDP. Economic achievements are the result of a well-planned strategy pursued by its political elites since the mid-1950s. This paradox contradicts, to a certain extent, the assumption that subnational authoritarianism in nationally democratic regimes are likely to be found in poor and underdeveloped units. In the case of Bahia, its inhabitants are very poor but its economy is not underdeveloped as compared to the majority of Brazilian states. Bahia s political dynamics Bahia s recent political history is intertwined with that of Antônio Carlos Magalhães (ACM) who governed the state or supported its governors for the last 25 years, with few intermissions. He governed the state twice during the authoritarian regime and in 1990 he was elected by popular vote. If he was not governing the state, he occupied appointed federal offices both during the military and in the democratic regimes. In the post-authoritarian period and prior to 2006, the PFL suffered only one electoral defeat, in ACM died in 2007 while he was in the Senate. Table 4 lists the names and the parties of state governors during the military and the democratic regimes. Table 4 - Bahia Governors by term and party, Governor Term Party Luis Viana Filho ARENA Antônio Carlos Magalhães ARENA Roberto Santos ARENA Antônio Carlos Magalhães ARENA/PDS João Durval Carneiro PDS Waldir Pires /Nilo Coelho PMDB Antônio Carlos Magalhães PFL Paulo Ganen Souto PFL Cesar Borges PFL Paulo Ganen Souto PFL Jacques Wagner PT Note: Election by popular vote was reintroduced in the states in 1982 and two rounds of voting when no candidate achieved a majority was introduced in The construction of ACM s leadership and the exclusion of old political leaders was a master-stroke. The strategy was to capture young and talented professionals, in particular those graduated in economics and public administration, granting them major positions in the administration s agencies, thus creating a group of what I labeled technocrats-turnedpoliticians (Souza, 1997). In doing so ACM brought to the recently reformed administration skilled professionals who were carefully chosen to occupy key positions. In doing so ACM was also preparing his own political group with a large team of technocrats. Later ACM sponsored their careers as elected politicians and slowly took ground from his old allies, mainly the Magalhães and the Vianna families, who had opened the doors for ACM s political upgrading. This characteristic of Bahian politics plays against an oft-quoted argument that ACM s political ties were with traditional politicians, thus making him a representative of oligarchic interests. Technocrats-turned-politicians started their careers as state secretaries or as heads of state companies and then the selected ones ran for the federal legislature. They were also appointed by ACM to federal positions, both during the military years and after redemocratization, and, depending on how ACM evaluated their loyalty, he sponsored their candidacies to Salvador s and to Bahia s chief executive (Souza, 1997: 125). 8

9 In the 1982 election, the first by popular poll, ACM, who was the governor in office, appointed Cleriston Andrade as his party s candidate. Andrade, a member of the technocratturned-politician group, died in a plane accident 45 days before the election was due. ACM then appointed João Durval Carneiro, former mayor of Feira de Santana, who, as Andrade, was not well known by the electorate but not a technocrat-turned-politician. The 1982 election became a test of ACM s leadership for two reasons. Firstly, the 1982 election inaugurated the return to the popular vote after 18 years of indirect election. ACM and his candidate were to be judged for the first time by the electorate and not by a restricted group of military. Secondly, as the major controller of a political group, ACM still did not have a natural and trustful successor therefore he had to submit to the electorate the names of two relatively unknown candidates. 8 Carneiro won with 39% of the votes. When asked how he managed to elect an unknown candidate in a short period of time, ACM replied with one of his oft-quoted sentence: I win elections with a bag of money in one hand and a whip in another, ACM s own definition of the stick-and-carrot metaphor (Souza, 1997). The Carneiro administration was a fiasco, politically, financially and administratively. He spent his term trying to remove ACM s influence on the government because the latter had appointed most of the heads of key administrative positions, a strategy used by ACM to tie the hands of every governor he supported. Carneiro ended his term surrounded by accusations of corruption and responsible for hiring hundreds of civil servants in only one day, on the verge of the deadline set up by the federal electoral court prohibiting contracts before elections and to avoid the forthcoming constitutional restriction on civil servants recruitment without public competition. Carneiro s suspicious of corruption have never been investigated. In the 1986 election, while ACM was enjoying, for the first time, a high profile ministerial position granted to him by President Sarney, at home his candidate for the governorship, Josaphat Marinho, suffered the worst defeat in the country. Marinho ran against Waldir Pires, then affiliated to the PMDB, who won 55% of the votes and 1.5 million votes ahead of Marinho, the highest difference registered in that election nationally. The PMDB also won both Senate seats and the majority of congressional and state legislative s delegates; in the latter ACM had control of 40% of its members and Pires coalition counted for 58%, a majority that he would lose within a year (Souza, 1997). What were the reasons behind such a change in the preferences of the electorate? They were analyzed elsewhere (Souza, 1997) but two stand out. Firstly, an exogenous, national factor: the election was influenced by the popularity and the overall, albeit temporary, success of a stabilization plan named the Cruzado, which was credited to the PMDB, a party to which the elected governor, Pires, was then affiliated. 9 Secondly, an endogenous factor: opposition parties were able to put together a wide coalition and this coalition was able to name a credible candidate. As shown below, both reasons prevailed in the 2006 election, although the external factor was no longer a stabilization policy but rather, as I argue, the consolidation of federalized social policies. Furthermore, despite still belonging to the same party as President Sarney, the PMDB, Pires administration did not benefit from the financial 8 Later ACM s successor became his son, Luís Eduardo, who was going to run for Bahia s chief executive in He died early that year, at the age of The main evidence of this is that the PMDB elected 22 governors of the then existent 24 states. 9

10 support of the federal government given that ACM was not only Sarney s powerful Communication Minister but also his closest ally. One of Pires first administrative measures was to fire thousands of civil servants, including well-paid ones from state companies, on the grounds of the state s fiscal stress. Like Carneiro s, the Pires administration was seen by the electorate through opinion polls as a failure. He frustrated expectations around his government not only administratively but because he resigned after two years to become Ulysses Guimarães running mate in the 1989 presidential election. Pires resignation left the way open for his deputy, Nilo Coelho, a wealthy landowner. His administration was surrounded by corruption scandals. As it also happened with the Carneiro administration, these scandals were not investigated. This shows the weakness of Bahia s institutions and their low degree of institutionalization in the early years of redemocratization. ACM returned to Bahia s governorship in the 1990 election. The so-called anti-carlistas (several groups united by a permanent or a circumstantial opposition against ACM) were divided, which helped ACM to win in the 1 st round but only with 30% of the valid votes. While governing Bahia, ACM did not despise the national scene. He kept a low profile during the 1989 presidential election but in the shadows he supported Collor and ignored his party s candidate. After one year of the Collor administration, ACM was again on the national scene as a major star. He appointed several protégés to Collor s cabinet, including three ministers and the heads of several federal agencies. ACM s strategy of finding ways to get close to the federal government was successful and brought federal resources and policy benefits to the state. ACM left Bahia s government in 1994 to run for the Senate, when two seats were available. He appointed for one of the seats Waldeck Ornelas, a member of ACM s technocrat-turnedpolitician team. Pires was the main candidate from the opposition. ACM won one seat, with 33% of the votes, and also managed to elect Ornelas, in a tight competition surrounded by allegations of fraud. 10 The defeated candidate took fraud allegations into court, but Ornelas victory was cleared by the court. For governor, ACM appointed again a technocrat-turnedpolitician, Paulo Souto, at that time also little known by the electorate. The following table shows the electoral results for the governorship in the 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2006 elections. 11 Bahia is home to Brazil s 4 th largest electorate, with 9,109,353 registered voters in Ornelas won 1,291,382 votes and Pires 1, Data on elections previous to 1994 are not available on line. 10

11 Table 5 - Bahia: Results of the 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2006 election for state governor Year Candidates and Null/Void/Abstentions Party Number of Votes % 1994(1) Paulo Souto João Durval Void/Null Abstentions 1998 Cesar Borges José Ribeiro Others Void/Null Abstentions 2002 Paulo G. Souto Jacques Wagner Others Void/Null Abstentions 2006 Jacques Wagner Paulo G. Souto Others Void Null PFL PMN PFL PT PFL PT PT PFL 2,235,659 1,577,043 2,418, , ,297 2,871,025 2,057, ,895 1,052,887 2,168,773 3,242,336 2,638, , , ,875 Abstention 1,884,249 Notes: (1) There were two rounds of voting because no candidate achieved a majority in the first round. Source: Tribunal Superior Eleitoral ( Table 5 shows that the increase in the number of votes of what became PFL s main opposition party in Bahia, the PT, started in More importantly, the figures above show that PFL s candidates for the state executive have traditionally maintained a relatively constant number of valid votes, around 2.5 million. The stability in the number of votes indicates that the PFL has managed to sustain a captive and faithful electorate. Unlike other similar cases of one party control over politics in democratic regimes, figures above demonstrate that the PFL never achieved easy or unchallenged victories, with the exception of the landslide election of The same occurred in the cases analyzed by Gibson (2004). The fact that PFL s candidates had always captured around 2.5 million valid votes raises two questions: (1) what sectors of the electorate had been voting for the PFL and (2) are they territorially concentrated? Table 6 Votes for candidates and parties by municipal size (% of valid votes)) Municipality Size (inhabitants) Souto Durval Borges Ribeiro Souto Wagner Souto Wagner Up to 10, ,001 to 20, ,001 to 50, ,001 to 200, Above 200, Sources: Tribunal Superior Eleitoral - TRE; IBGE 1991 and 2000 Censuses and Population Calculations for 2002 and 2006 Table 6 shows that in 1994 there was no relationship between the percentage of votes for the candidates and the size of the municipality. In 1998 there is a slight relationship, with PFL s 11

12 candidate performing better in middle- and small-size municipalities, and votes for the opposition candidate more concentrated in more urbanized municipalities. In 2002 Souto s votes declined as the size of the municipality increased. In 2006 Wagner increased his percentage of votes in municipalities of all sizes when compared to 2002 but the most dramatic increase in the percentage of votes given to the PT in 2006 was in smaller municipalities, i.e. those with up to 50,000 inhabitants, despite the fact that the PFL still won the majority. As the table shows in this sub-group the PT s candidate increased his percentage of votes by almost 80%. Statistical analyses also confirm the importance of small municipalities to the PFL s victories and the relative fall in PFL s support from voters from small municipalities (up to 50,000 inhabitants) between 1998 and It also shows that the party s control of votes in small municipalities was achieved in the 1998 election given that the percentage of votes to the PFL in 1994 was much smaller than in 1998 and The table also reveals the decrease in PFL votes in small municipalities after 1998 (Table 7). Table 7 Percentage of votes for PFL s candidates and size of municipality Inhabitants Number of municipalities pop2000 total % Pop Tot % of votes to PFL sout06 sout02 borg98 sout94 Up to 10, ,0% ,001 to 20, ,3% ,001 to 50, ,3% ,001 to 200, ,2% Above 200, ,1% Total 415* 13,039, % *Two municipalities created in the early 2000s were excluded Graph 1 introduces other demographic data the percentage of urban population over the total population in relation to the percentage of votes for PFL candidates. As in Table 6, no relation was found in 1994 but in the following elections it is in municipalities with less than 50% of urban population that the PFL reached absolute majorities, 1998 being a landslide victory when 76.5% of the electorate of municipalities with an urbanization rate of less than 25% voted for Borges. 12

13 Graph 1 Percentages of votes for PFL s candidates for governors and urbanization rates 1994, 1998, 2002, % of votes < 25 = 25 - < 50 = 50 - < 75 =75 - < 95 >= 95 Urbanization Rate A common assumption among political analysts is that voters living in municipalities with lower HDI would support PFL candidates. To test the assumption, municipalities from Bahia were divided into five groups: Group 1 encompasses 79 municipalities with HDIs lower than 0.50; in Group 2 there are 84 municipalities with HDIs between 0.59 and 0.61; in Group 3, 73 municipalities with HDIs between 0.61 and 0.63; in Group 4, 89 municipalities with HDIs between 0.63 and 0.655: and in Group 5, 90 municipalities with HDIs above Graph 2 displays the average number of votes for PFL candidates in each of these groups. As expected, PFL candidates were electorally stronger in municipalities with lower HDIs, particularly in 2002 and Nevertheless, and as shown elsewhere (Souza, 2009), the overall electoral results are far from being explained by HDIs. Graph 2 - Percentage of votes for PFL governors and HDIs % of votes HDI Groups The results of the 1998 election can be analyzed as the height of the PFL s and of ACM s dominance before their slow and subtle decline. There was no 2 nd round for governor and the 13

14 percentage of votes granted to Cesar Borges, also a relatively unknown member of the ACM team, but not a technocrat-turned-politician, was high, although the number of absolute votes maintained its traditional ceiling, around 2 million, similar to ACM s and to PFL s records in previous and in forthcoming elections. For the Senate, when only one seat was available, Paulo Souto was elected with 2,581,903 votes, meaning 73.29%. The 2002 election was more competitive than that of Although PFL s candidate won in the 1 st round, the percentage of votes given to the defeated candidate was much higher than in Again the number of absolute votes remained similar to those of previous elections. This shows that PFL s candidates for the executive have traditionally maintained a relatively constant number of votes, which differ from the party s performance at the legislature, more unstable and decreasing after For the Senate, ACM was elected with 30.59% of the votes and former governor Cesar Borges with 27.89%. Waldir Pires ran again for the Senate, achieving only 18.41% of the votes but this time there were no suspicious of electoral fraud. In that election electronic ballots were introduced throughout Brazil and this has had two major consequences: to dramatically decrease fraud and to ease the act of voting of less literate electors. PFL s slow and gradual decline shown above was suddenly interrupted in the 2006 election, with the unexpected victory of PT s candidate, Jacques Wagner, in the 1 st round. Although the main opposition parties supported Wagner, in particular the PMDB, the PSDB, and the PDT, a coalition was not officially registered because of the federal electoral court s decision prohibiting regional alliances diverse from national ones. The lack of formal party coalition decided at the centre had no practical consequences. Wagner s victory was a bombshell because he was behind Souto, who was seeking reelection, in every opinion poll. In an August 2006 poll, for instance, Wagner scored only 13% of the voters preferences, although his position was rapidly improving at each new poll. The first sign of a possible 2 nd round was detected by one poll only on the verge of the election, in which Souto scored 51% and Wagner 41%. As it also happened with Pires election, Wagner became a credible candidate, not only because of the support and close ties to President Lula, but mainly because he managed to build an electoral coalition with a relatively strong party in the state, the PMDB, now under the leadership of Geddel Vieira Lima, who has made his political career sometimes on ACM s side and sometimes not. Despite the relative decline in PFL electoral support after 1998, the party remained in office until Some reasons to explain the electoral success and the longevity of the PFL in Bahia have become the focuses of local political analysts. Most concur that its success lies in internal characteristics of the party in Bahia. Many saw this political group as an oligarchy (new and old) and/or as playing the political game only upon patron-client relations, local bossism, pork-barrel, etc. These analyzes, however, are acknowledged by some (Dantas Neto, 2006a and Souza, 1997) as an oversimplification of a much more complex political phenomenon. Furthermore, many analysts tend to credit the PFL s successive victories to the personage of ACM alone leaving aside what others see as a style of doing politics and of governing that no longer requires the existence of the personage (Dantas Neto, 2006b; Souza, 1997). This is why it is important to investigate (a) the strategies used by ACM and his party to control check-and-balance institutions and (b) whether policy strategies used by ACM 14

15 first and the PFL later have played a role in the group`s electoral victories and in keeping a captive and steady electorate. The functioning of democratic institutions Executive-legislative relations Very few scholarly works have analyzed at length the functioning and the influence of the state executive over check-and-balance institutions. Exceptions are Abrucio (1998) and Souza (1997) who pictured this relationship more than a decade ago. They both agreed that check-and-balance institutions at the state level were weak and likely to be manipulated by the executive. However, much has changed in the states institutions since then. Bahia has 63 state representatives. Although the number of parties represented in the legislature may seem high and it has been increasing - 13 in 1994 and 1998, 15 in 2002 and 16 in 2006 (Table 8) - this does not mean, as some outsiders see it, that Bahia s party system is fragmented. As a matter of fact, ACM s electoral strategy has always been to disseminate his closer allies among several parties. This does not mean that coalitions to govern are broad but rather that those affiliated to other parties were indeed PFL s traditional and most loyal followers who were sent to other parties to accommodate political struggles at the local level, a point I will return later. Since this strategy has been implemented, the PFL had the control of parties such as the PL, PTB, PP, PPB, PMN, PPR and other smaller ones which I labeled elsewhere PFL s satellite parties (Souza, 1997). With the PFL s defeat, the same strategy is now been adopted by the PMDB. 15

16 Table 8 Results of the 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006 elections for the state legislative, by party Party Number of elected representatives Number of representatives 1 year after the election PFL PPB PL PMDB PSDB PT PTB PDT PP PPR 2 PMN PL 1 PC do B PSB PV 1 PSC PT do B PST 4 PSD 2 PRP PPS 1 PRTB 2 1 PSL 1 2 PTN 1 1 PR 5 No. of candidates Candidate/seats ratio 7,666 6,635 7,968 10,222 Note: Parties in blue have traditionally supported the PFL, in red have opposed it and in green the PMDB - has most of the time supported the PFL and now is the major player in the PT s coalition. Some of the small parties in blue, which have traditionally supported the PFL, are now supporting the PT. Throughout these years several parties have changed their names, generally as a result of merging with other parties. This has been most common among small parties of the right of the political spectrum. Source: Author s calculation As the last column of Table 8 shows party switching was intense after the PFL s defeat and as a result of the need of state representatives to become part of the governing coalition. Nevertheless, important to notice that party switching in Bahia and in Brazil is, most of the time, triggered by opportunistic alliances in local and state elections and it does not involve ideologically noncontiguous parties. The candidate/seat ratio in Bahia is small as compared to other states with similar electorate. Another way of investigating executive-legislative relations in Brazil is through amendments to the annual budget. In federal countries characterized by high levels of socioeconomic and financial disparities and in which fiscal equalization mechanisms are absent or insufficient such as Brazil, amendments to the budget have become an important variable for analyzing executive-legislative relations. Budget amendments as a tool for analyzing executivelegislative relations at the national level, as well as for testing the hypothesis of the 16

17 governors control over the state delegation in Congress, have recently become an area of academic research in Brazil. 12 However, little is known about the state level. Budget amendments in Bahia work as follows. 13 As everywhere in Brazil, the planning team elaborates the budget proposal, which is sent to the legislature by the executive. Discussions or rather clarifications about it are between government officials and members of the committee of Finance and Budgeting. Unlike the national congress, there is no specific committee or subcommittee for the annual budget. According to federal and state constitutions, parliamentarians of all levels of government are entitled to propose amendments to the budget, as opposed to what happened during the military regime. Budget spending in Brazil is not mandatory. According to interviewees, during the PFL s rule only amendments by representatives from the PFL and its satellite parties were honored. 14 However, not all lawmakers from the governing coalition have a share on the amendments. According to one interviewee, the champions of implemented amendments were representatives closer to the chief executive. Oddly, approved amendments are not integrated into the budget, but are rather an appendix to the budgetary law. There is no record or database of the amendments, except a printed copy with all amendments proposed, whether approved or not, which is kept in the library. As one official put it, referring not only to the lack of data on the budget, this is a house without memory. As there is no database on amendments, there is also no follow up of their implementation, either by the legislature or by the secretariats in charge of their implementation. If amendments are a mere formality, why parliamentarians bother to propose them? The answer by parliamentarians interviewed is that they have a double objective. Firstly, each parliamentarian keeps a record of his/her amendment and as soon as the budget is approved, he/she sends a letter to local leaders where the amendment is destined. Secondly, and most importantly, it is a document used by the parliamentarian and the mayor when they, together, manage to schedule an appointment with a secretary or the governor. This, of course, only happens if the representative is part of the governing coalition. The lack of consequences as regards budget amendments is, however, about to be minimized because Governor Wagner has made an agreement to release R$ 400 thousand for each representative regardless of party affiliation. The lack of consequences of budget amendments does not mean, however, that they have no use for local constituencies or for state lawmakers. They are used as an instrument for putting pressure on the executive for resources. There is enough anecdotal evidence mentioned by government officials and state representatives interviewed that at least three state agencies are crucial for making investments in municipalities viable and that investments favor state and local politicians of the governing coalition but not all of them. 12 See, for instance, Figueiredo and Limongi (2008) and Souza (2003). 13 Two officials from the state s legislature, three civil servants and two state lawmakers, one from the PFL and another from the PSB, have been interviewed for a better understanding of the role played by budget amendments. Interviewees, however, also provided valuable information about executive-legislative relations beyond budgetary issues. 14 One interviewee stated that in the last year of Paulo Souto s term an informal agreement allowed the approval of one amendment by each representative for the construction of wells, regardless of party affiliation. The agreement, however, had no or little positive impact for the opposition because their votes accrue mainly from large cities. 17

18 As everywhere, amendments proposed by state representatives are destined to the municipalities or constituencies they represent. If an amendment is implemented, an agreement (convênio) is signed between the state government and the municipality. Unfortunately, no disaggregated information about these convênios is available to researchers. The only available information is a spreadsheet with all state transfers to Bahia s municipalities (Table 9) handed out by the Municipal Accounts Tribunal to a foreign PhD candidate. 15 Of these transfers, ICMS and IPVA are constitutional transfers. 16 Thus, only the columns convênios and others are discretionary transfers, although not necessarily reflecting amendments by representatives. Important to note that the height of the amount transferred through convênios and others was registered in 2002, a year of state election, and not in the years of local elections 2000 and 2004 although in 2004 there was an increase in other transfers. Also important to mention that transfers through convênios and others are higher than the amount transferred on account of IPVA and that sometimes they represent almost half of ICMS transfers. This displays the dependence of municipalities in Bahia from discretionary revenue. Table 9 State transfers to municipalities, ICMS IPVA Convênios Others Source: Municipal Accounts Tribunal kindly made available by a PhD candidate, Mr. German Lodola Summing up, resources for assuring votes for the PFL s in local constituencies are negotiated by state representatives who act as brokers between the state executive branch and local politicians through discretionary funds which are kept under strict control by the executive. This means that governors are very much free to control the budget, the states expenditure and to select their favorite state and local politicians. The oversight of the executive by the legislature is another tool for understanding executivelegislative relations and to assess the level of the state s institutionalization. Two examples can be cited to illustrate the control of the executive over the legislative. Firstly, governor Paulo Souto, who governed from 2002 to 2006, denied representatives a password allowing them to follow up public expenditure. This follow up has been a practice at the federal level for some years now and, as reminded by Gibson (2004), fiscal accountability of government has been the genesis of democratic rule throughout the ages. This denial has dominated the 15 Native researchers have always found great difficulty in having access to government s information during the PFL ruling, whereas foreign researchers were better treated. 16 IPVA is a tax on motor vehicles and ICMS is a type of value-added tax. They are both collected by the state and a share of them is transferred to the municipalities. 18