Neither Political Appointment Nor Cooperation: The Importance of the Brazilian Federal Audit Court´s Autonomy on the Control of Municipal Resources from Federal Level

ABSTRACT

The Brazilian Federal Audit Court (TCU, acronym in Portuguese) has independence and autonomy to oversight and judge any public actors who manage federal resources regardless of the government level in which these resources are managed. This research aims to answer if the political appointment of the TCU’s heads (ministros) and formal institutional cooperation influence their oversight activities on municipal revenues from the federal level. From unpublished data obtained by web scraping, the analyze involves all the audits on municipalities between 2005 and 2014. The tests indicate that the effect of the ministers’ appointment on the odds of condemnation of municipal accounts is modest, while the started audits by own Audit Court increase the odds of condemnation than formal cooperation of other institutions which report suspected irregularity. The results suggest that institutional independence weakens the influence of political parties through the appointment of the Audit Court’s heads and that TCU´s autonomy is relevant to identify irregularities in a more assertively way.

Accountability; Courts of accounts; Control institutions; Corruption