Explaining the Puzzle of Weak Parties with Strong Legislative Leaders in Brazil: Towards a Theory of Clientelistic Party Discipline

Abstract

Brazil has long been marked by a puzzle of contradicting institutional incentives, while the electoral arena promotes candidate-centered campaigns and personalism, the legislative arena promotes centralization of power in the hands of party leaders. These contradicting incentives have generated disagreements regarding the ability of legislative leaders to promote party discipline in Brazil. I argue that scholars have overlooked how clientelism and corruption can generate party discipline, by modifying legislators’ goals and career opportunities. Clientelism makes position taking less salient which in turn decreases the incentives to buck the party whip. Additionally, vote buying enhances the role of brokers in credit claiming activities, weakening committees, and increasing leadership power. Finally, corruption provides incentives for secrecy and concentration of power, which also facilitates party discipline. Indeed, I find empirical evidence of party discipline in a boss dominated clientelistic party in Brazil. Importantly, I show how party discipline is observationally equivalent in cohesive mass-parties, as well as in boss dominated machines, making plain the importance of my theory to distinguish these different causal mechanisms. My theory can generalize and reveals the scope conditions of conventional theories of legislative behavior. This study opens new avenues for research regarding the interplay of machine politics and institutions, that will advance our general understanding of both party discipline and clientelism.