An emerging literature finds that in developing countries, legislators frequently suffer a negative incumbency advantage, but disagrees as to the causes of this empirical pattern. We examine the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies as a critical test case. The extant literature predicts that Brazilian legislators should face an incumbency disadvantage, given the electoral rules, relatively high rates of corruption, and progressive ambition. Using a new discontinuity approach, we find a large positive incumbency advantage. We leverage within-country variance and find that incumbency is greatest in the least developed areas, suggesting that previous work may be confounding country-specific events with development levels.

Autor: Ciro Biderman, George Avelino, Scott W. Desposato