Abstract
This paper presents empirical evidence that the distribution of federal voluntary transfers is biased in favor of municipalities in which the mayor’s party has higher identification with the coalition of parties in the Legislature that has strong representation in the municipality. This research measures party identification between the federal Legislature and the municipal Executive branch based on Bendavid-Val’s locational quotients applied to voting data. The paper’s main contribution is to go beyond the mayor-president partisan transfers’ approach, and to shed light on the important role the federal Legislature plays in the partisan distribution of subnational voluntary transfers.
Keywords:
Voluntary intergovernmental transfers; Intergovernmental grants; Bendavid-Val’s locational coefficient; Party identification; Legislative partisan transfers