Colombia Internacional

Colomb. int. | eISSN 1900-6004 | ISSN 0121-5612

Rewarding the corrupt? Reelection and Scandal Involvement in the Brazilian 2006 Legislative Elections1

No. 68 (2008-07-01)
  • Lúcio Remuzat Rennó
    **Professor adjunto, Centro de Pesquisas e Pós-Graduação sobre as Américas, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil.luciorenno@unb.br.

Abstract

Corruption was a central theme of the Brazilian 2006 elections, both at the Executive and Legislative levels. According to our data, more than 100 Federal Deputies, or 1 in 5 in the 52nd Legislature (2003-2007) were mentioned by the media in relation to some scandal. The focus of this paper is how Federal Deputies involved in corruption scandals fare during elections. Do voters punish allegedly corrupt politicians? We use a dataset of Brazilian Federal Deputies legislative and electoral performance to test how involvement in corruption is related to career choice and reelection success in the 2006 elections.

Keywords: reelection, legislative careers, corruption

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