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This paper examines how the adoption of the Australian ballot (AB), and ipso facto, the transition from the nominal to effective secret vote, shaped the nature of party politics in Brazil. Engaging the literature on political clientelism, the impact of the AB on three outcomes is studied: 1) the ideological leanings of voters at the ballot box; 2) the degree of electoral control enjoyed by local vote brokers; and 3) the capacity of citizens to effectively participate in the electoral process. In order to get leverage on these issues, the paper utilizes an original dataset -painstakingly assembled from regional electoral archives- which contains municipal-level vote returns for federal deputy and senate contests during the period before and after the AB's introduction in Brazil (1958-1962). The dataset exploits the fact that the AB was introduced at different times in different states and for different offices in the country, thereby creating an unprecedented opportunity to assess the impact of this institution. Using a triple difference-in-difference procedure, the study finds that the AB: 1) shifted the ideological balance of power from Right to Left; 2) did not greatly weaken the hand of vote brokers; and 3) greatly increased the proportion of wasted votes cast in elections.

"An important question for the health and longevity of democratic governance is how institutions may be fashioned to prevent electoral victors from drawing on the resources of the state to perpetuate themselves in power. This book addresses the issue by examining how the structure of electoral institutions - the rules of democratic contestation that determine the manner in which citizens choose their representatives - affects political corruption, defined as the abuse of state power or resources for campaign finance or party-building purposes. To this end, the book develops a novel theoretical framework that examines electoral institutions as a potential vehicle for political parties to exploit the state as a source of political finance. Hypotheses derived from this framework are assessed using an unprecedented public employees' survey conducted by the author in Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile"--

Research on clientelism emphasizes the use of brokers to mobilize voters. To utilize these agents efficiently, politicians must learn about brokers' relative abilities and allocate scarce resources accordingly. Drawing upon a hand-coded dataset based on the archives of Gustavo Capanema, a powerful mid-twentieth-century congressman from Minas Gerais, Brazil, this paper offers the first direct evidence of such learning dynamics. The analysis concentrates on Brazil's pre-secret ballot era, a time when measuring broker performance was particularly straightforward. Consistent with theories of political learning, the data demonstrate that resource flows to local machines were contingent on the deviation between actual and expected votes received in previous elections. Moreover, given politicians' ability to discern mobilization capacity, payments to brokers were highly effective in bringing out the vote.

AbstractFew innovations in democratic institutional design are considered as fundamental as the introduction of voting through the use of a uniform, official, and secret ballot. One account claims that the official ballot liberates dependent voters from the dictates of local elites, thereby enhancing democratic competition. Another argues that in contexts of widespread illiteracy, its adoption may be tantamount to a suffrage restriction. This article adjudicates between these views by drawing upon an original data set of municipal‐level voting returns from Brazil's Second Republic (1945–1964). The unique staggered rollout of the official ballot during this period permits one to assess its impact with unprecedented accuracy. The article finds that the primary consequence of ballot reform was suffrage restriction. Rather than liberating poor and dependent voters, the official ballot made it exceedingly difficult for these individuals to vote. Moreover, parliamentary debates indicate that this was an anticipated and intended effect of the reform.

This paper develops a game-theoretic model for assessing the relationship between ideological divisions in a society and prospects for good governance. Synthesizing the insights of the literature on political career concerns with those from the literature on issue framing, the model emphasizes that ideological balance-rough equality in the ideological component of utility the median voter derives from government and opposition-is the key to good governance. Polities which are ideologically balanced are ruled by elites who attempt to impress their merit upon the electorate through the provision of public goods. Ideologically imbalanced polities are ruled by elites who use public resources for their own consumption and who court voters through socially unproductive issue framing. The cases of pre-revolutionary Cuba, post-apartheid South Africa, and post-Pinochet Chile are used to illustrate the crucial importance of ideological balance for good governance. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

This paper develops a game-theoretic model for assessing the relationship between ideological divisions in a society and prospects for good governance. Synthesizing the insights of the literature on political career concerns with those from the literature on issue framing, the model emphasizes that ideological balance—rough equality in the ideological component of utility the median voter derives from government and opposition—is the key to good governance. Polities which are ideologically balanced are ruled by elites who attempt to impress their merit upon the electorate through the provision of public goods. Ideologically imbalanced polities are ruled by elites who use public resources for their own consumption and who court voters through socially unproductive issue framing. The cases of pre-revolutionary Cuba, post-apartheid South Africa, and post-Pinochet Chile are used to illustrate the crucial importance of ideological balance for good governance.

Studies of the link between state capacity and development often utilize national-level governance indicators to explain fine-grained development outcomes. As capacity in some bureaucratic agencies matters more for these outcomes than capacity in others, this work proxies for capacity within the set of relevant agencies by using a measure of 'mean' capacity across all agencies in a polity. This practice is problematic for two reasons: (1) within-country, cross-agency diversity in capacity often overwhelms the variation encountered across public sectors considered in their entireties; (2) national-level reputations for capacity are not particularly informative about differences in capacity in functionally equivalent agencies in different countries. The article draws on the author's survey of public employees in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile to establish these points. Adapted from the source document.

Studies of the link between state capacity and development often utilize national-level governance indicators to explain fine-grained development outcomes. As capacity in some bureaucratic agencies matters more for these outcomes than capacity in others, this work proxies for capacity within the set of relevant agencies by using a measure of 'mean' capacity across all agencies in a polity. This practice is problematic for two reasons: (1) within-country, cross-agency diversity in capacity often overwhelms the variation encountered across public sectors considered in their entireties; (2) national-level reputations for capacity are not particularly informative about differences in capacity in functionally equivalent agencies in different countries. The article draws on the author's survey of public employees in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile to establish these points.

This study presents a survey-based method for conducting inference into the determinants of sensitive political behavior. The approach combines two well-established literatures in statistical methods in the social sciences: the randomized response (RR) methodology utilized to reduce evasive answer bias and the generalized propensity score methodology utilized to draw inferences about causal effects in observational studies. The approach permits one to estimate the causal impact of a multivalued predictor variable of interest on a given sensitive behavior in the face of unknown interaction effects between the predictor and the confounders as well as nonlinearities in the relationship between the confounders and the sensitive behavior. Simulation results point to the superior performance of the RR relative to direct survey questioning using this method for samples of moderate to large size. The utility of the approach is illustrated through an application to corruption in the public bureaucracy in three countries in South America.