The power of money<\/strong> Quantitative studies on the relationship between money and votes were pioneered in the US in the 1970s. In Brazil, the earliest research on how money influences the elections began in the late 1990s, says political scientist Ranulfo Paranhos, a professor at the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL). \u201cThis is something we believe happens intuitively, but that needs to be demonstrated scientifically: does higher campaign spending mean more votes? The literature indicates that the answer is a definite yes,\u201d says Paranhos. \u201cThe next question to ask is, to what extent does money affect election outcomes? Who benefits most from campaign spending? What type of campaign spending produces what effect?\u201d Research on federal deputies in Brazil came to the same conclusions as political scientist Gary Jacobson did for candidates for Congress in the US: \u201cChallengers are the ones that benefit most from campaign spending; it takes more money for an incumbent to convince voters.\u201d In other words, in a hypothetical situation in which candidates receive the same number of votes, the incumbent will have spent more money to reach this result.<\/p>\n In a paper published last year, titled \u201cDinheiro e sucesso eleitoral em 2008, 2012 e 2016 no Brasil\u201d (Money and election success in Brazil in 2008, 2012 and 2016), Horochovski explored the effects from electoral legislation introduced in 2015 to limit the weight of campaign spending in election outcomes. This goal, according to the study, was not achieved. \u201cThe top spenders are still winning the elections. While average campaign spend per vote fell in 2016 after rising from 2008 to 2012, the majority of votes were still garnered by the biggest spenders,\u201d says the UFPR professor. The difference in average campaign spending between successful and unsuccessful candidates in local council elections was 629% in 2008, 685% in 2012 and 664% in 2016.<\/p>\n It has become increasingly difficult for candidates to win elections without a professional team of lawyers, accountants, and campaign managers<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Horochovski is co-leading a working group on policy strategy and the influence of money on the political system, at the Brazilian Association of Graduate Studies in Political Science (ANPOCS). The first research published by the working group, created in 2011, was primarily on the subject of campaign funding. Gradually their research interests broadened to include lobbying and other ways that private interests influence political actors.<\/p>\n \u201cMore recent studies have explored issues surrounding judicialization and corruption. Most papers about campaign finance deal with lawful campaign contributions. But after the recent political scandals in Brazil, there has been an increased interest in studying illegal political contributions,\u201d notes Horochovski. \u201cBut this is a more challenging field of research, as information about unlawful campaign spending is rarely publicly available.\u201d<\/p>\n While limiting themselves to aboveboard campaign finance, these studies clearly demonstrate the power of money in election success. Using a network approach to study Brazil\u2019s municipal elections since 2008, Horochovski and his team showed that the more central a candidate\u2019s role in a party\u2019s funding structure, the more likely that candidate is to be elected city councilor.<\/p>\n<\/div> As a starting point, the paper by Mancuso, Oliveira, and Speck tested the hypothesis that candidates with more money are more likely to go to court because they are better able to afford the lawyers to do so. \u201cIn other words, the courts are an instrument that can be better leveraged by the wealthy,\u201d summarizes Oliveira. \u201cThe same is true when it comes to the judicialization of public policy. If this hypothesis is confirmed, it will mean judicialization is an additional source of inequalities.\u201d<\/p>\n What the data have shown for certain so far is a trend toward highly professionalized political campaigns. It has become increasingly difficult to win an election without a professional team of lawyers, accountants, and campaign managers. \u201cJudicialization has created an important niche market for the legal profession. Politicians have discovered, and are increasingly exploiting, judicial avenues for political gain. This has led to the formation of armies of specialized lawyers,\u201d says Oliveira.<\/p>\n But professionalization can lead to exclusion by making running for office a more complex process, especially for those who are lower in the party\u2019s ranks and have less access to these professionals, notes Horochovski. \u201cWe found, among other things, that this leads to more candidates being disqualified by the electoral courts. Most of the time they are disqualified not because of fraud or corruption, but because of accounting, formal or clerical issues,\u201d he says, adding that more female candidates are disqualified than men. \u201cOne reason is that Brazilian political parties are now required to fund a minimum quota of female candidates. But when we profiled female candidates who had been disqualified, most self-identified as housekeepers.\u201d This suggests, says Horochovski, that parties are not selecting female candidates whom they believe to be truly competitive.<\/p>\n The growing professionalization of political campaigns was demonstrsted in a 2018 paper by Paranhos on the municipal elections between 2008 and 2016. The study divided campaign expenses into \u201coverhead\u201d and \u201cstrategic\u201d costs\u2014with campaign office rental, fuel and other expenses placed in the first category, and advertising and accounting expenses in the second. In the eight-year period across the three elections, strategic expenses significantly outgrew overheads. Overhead expenses went from being 52.31% higher than strategic costs in 2008 to being 14.68% lower in 2016. Advertising expenditure is especially significant, consuming more than twice as much campaign funding as transportation\u2014an average of R$65,500 compared to R$29,000. \u201cWith greater professionalization comes higher campaign spending on strategy. And advertising is a big part of this. Candidates for mayor, in both small and large cities, typically believe they will reap good returns from spending on advertising,\u201d says Paranhos.<\/p>\n Methods used<\/strong> Basic information on cases from the most recent elections is available in a Case Tracking System (SADP) with which all electoral courts are integrated. \u201cBut to get the details on a case you would need to review the Di\u00e1rio da Justi\u00e7a<\/em>, which is not the easiest way to compile information,\u201d says Mancuso, referring to the official Justice System journal. \u201cFortunately, all the information we needed was readily available.\u201d In 2016 the SADP system was superseded by an Electronic Case System (PJe) containing what Mancuso describes as \u201cvery complete\u201d case files with all documents pertaining to a case.<\/p>\n But the team hit an unexpected snag when attempting to compile information: the PJe system uses captcha technology as a security feature to prevent the system from being crawled by bots, the very method the team used to \u201cread\u201d the case files, says Mancuso. This required the team to access each page manually. \u201cLuckily, the election data in the PJe system were primarily for 2018 and onward, so this didn\u2019t affect our research,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n While the quality of available data and ease of access have improved in recent decades, there are still significant limitations. \u201cOne thing that became evident was that the longer the time series we use, the more the issues and the less reliable the information,\u201d says Paranhos, citing problems such as gaps in data series, data entry errors, and a lack of standardization. On the positive side, Paranhos celebrates the newly launched electionsBR platform created by political scientists Denisson Silva, Fernando Meireles, and Beatriz Costa, which aggregates elections databases available at the High Electoral Court.<\/p>\n Project<\/strong>
\nThe paper by the trio of political scientists is part of a body of research that seeks to shed light on a question that affects everyone\u2019s lives: to what extent does financial power influence policy and political decisions, and the elections in particular? As noted by political scientist Rodrigo Horochovski from the Federal University of Paran\u00e1 (UFPR), a classical theme in political research is the risk that democracies could be weakened by big money and become plutocracies, or societies governed by the wealthy.<\/p>\n![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/082-087_dinheiro-e-politica_300-2-desktop-true.png\")
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\nAs in other quantitative studies in the humanities, research on campaign spending has benefited from the advent of digitization, which has opened up a vast universe of data for scholars, and made it easier for those data to be collated and compared. A usable volume of digitized case files has been available only since 2008, says Mancuso. Reviewing physical case files from previous years would require an extraordinary effort, a huge team, and a generous budget.<\/p>\n
\nCorporate crime and systemic corruption in Brazil (no. 17\/24464-7<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Regular Research Grant; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Wagner Pralon Mancuso (EACH-USP); Investment<\/strong> R$239,547.14.<\/p>\n
Judicialization of politics is neither exclusive to Brazil nor an entirely new phenomenon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The data suggests that recourse to the courts may indeed be being used to drag elections into a \u201cthird round.\u201d \u201cIf the reason were to ensure election integrity, it wouldn\u2019t matter if one candidate had 1% of votes and the other 99%. If the one with 1% has been implicated in vote buying, they\u2019re wrong just the same,\u201d says Mancuso. \u201cBut the targets of electoral litigation are typically the most competitive candidates. This could be because the justice system lacks the resources to entertain all cases, and focuses on the most contested ones; but it could also be that candidates are using lawsuits as a weapon against those ahead in the race,\u201d he says, adding that further research is needed to demonstrate whether this indicates the courts are being weaponized.<\/p>\n
Data on electoral cases cannot provide a measure of electoral corruption, as most cases are either dismissed or the candidates are ultimately absolved. But they can provide a measure of the \u201cjudicialization of politics,\u201d or the extent to which the Judiciary is involved in election processes.<\/p>\n
Judicialization, says Mancuso, can serve two purposes: \u201cIt can be used to ensure greater election integrity,\u201d by preventing abuse and dishonest election strategies, or it can \u201callow bad losers to use the justice system as if it were a third round, trying their luck.\u201d Mancuso refers to this as \u201cstrategic use of judicialization in the election process.\u201d He believes an increasing reliance on the Judiciary can upset the political balance if it reflects an attempt by financially powerful candidates to smother weaker ones.<\/p>\n This phenomenon is neither exclusive to Brazil nor entirely new. In 1995, Swedish political scientist Torbj\u00f6rn Vallinder reported what he described as a \u201cglobal expansion of judicial power.\u201d \u201cJudicialization research became more prolific in Brazil early in this century. It initially explored how judicial institutions influenced the political process broadly, but not elections specifically,\u201d says Vanessa Elias de Oliveira.<\/p>\n But examining the election process is necessary, she says, to understand how money can shape politics. \u201cThis can involve election corruption or unlawful uses of public or private funds in the election process. Many of these cases are brought to and settled by the courts,\u201d she says. To focus on the money factor, the researchers selected cases involving campaign spending and excluded \u201ccommon\u201d cases relating to slander or advertising irregularities, for example.<\/p>\n Oliveira believes the findings from the study are insufficient to show that judicialization is leading to a \u201cthird round\u201d in the elections. \u201cBut they do show that the Justice System has become an integral part of the political and election process. Recourse to the courts has become a given. Political actors will use them both to influence election results and to stake out their position, symbolically, on different issues,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing able to go to court to contest the election results is important in a democracy,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n<\/div>![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/082-087_dinheiro-e-politica_300-1-desktop-1.png\")
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