Limited impacts of public funding on diminishing inequality in electoral campaigns

Abstract

We investigated the consequences of using public funding and banning corporate donations to finance political campaigns for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies between 2010 and 2022. The goal is to assess whether these changes impacted the concentration of financial resources among candidates. To this end, we used descriptive statistics and measures of income inequality, such as the Gini Index and deciles ratio. The results point to an improvement in the overall picture of resource distribution only in the 2022 elections, while during 2018 was still a contest with resources highly concentrated in a few candidates. We posit that institutional factors – such as quotas for minorities and the electoral spending cap – combined with party-related factors have contributed to the decrease in inequality in 2022, but that they are still insufficient to reduce the vast disparities among candidates.

Keywords:
public funding; inequality; concentration of resources; elections; Brazilian Chamber of Deputies