Content area
Full text
What is the profile of candidates whose electoral campaigns are the most dependent on corporate donations? Our main objective is to identify factors that help explaining the level of corporate dependence among them. We answer this question in relation to the 2010 elections for federal deputy in Brazil. We test five hypotheses: 01. right-wing party candidates are more dependent than their counterparts on the left; 02. government coalition candidates are more dependent than candidates from the opposition; 03. incumbents are more dependent on corporate donations than challengers; 04. businesspeople running as candidates receive more corporate donations than other candidates; and 05. male candidates are more dependent than female candidates. Methodologically, the research design combines both descriptive and multivariate statistics. We use OLS regression, cluster analysis and the Tobit model. The results show support for hypotheses 01, 03 and 04. There is no empirical support for hypothesis 05. Finally, hypothesis 02 was not only rejected, but we find evidence that candidates from the opposition receive more contributions from the corporate sector.
Keywords: Corporate dependence; elections; campaign finance; federal deputies.
The Brazilian legislative elections of 2010 allowed candidates to take advantage of a variety of sources of campaign finance. One of these sources was the state, which makes available free television and radio airtime, but also funds parties directly1. Other legal sources of campaign funding are self-funding of candidates, private donations from individuals and companies, the sale of goods, fundraising events and income from financial investments. This study is limited to corporate donations to candidates who ran for federal deputy in 20102.
The financing of electoral campaigns by business is one of the principal forms of interaction between the corporate and political worlds (HAGGARD, SCHNEIDER and MAXFIELD, 1997). According to McMenamin (2009; 2012), a firm can contribute to electoral campaigns because of its ideological preferences, commitments arising from social ties to the recipient (e.g., friendship, family links, class identity, membership of the same social networks), a pragmatic desire to establish closer ties with the ruling party, or opposition parties with a greater chance of winning, independently of the profile of the recipient, and as reward for benefits given to the firm in the past - in the form of government contracts, favorable legislative or administrative decisions...