Voto econômico na América Latina: avaliação de políticas públicas e clareza de responsabilidade

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the role of economics and public policies in the retrospective evaluation of Latin American leaders and how the political-institutional context intervenes on this relationship. The period analyzed is between 2004 and 2014. Building on economic voting theory, I propose the insertion of new variables for studies of electoral behavior in Latin America. I argue that the evaluation of the Latin American presidents is due not only to the perception of the incumbent's performance in the economy, as the theory says, but also to a perception of government performance in public policies and in the fight against corruption. In the second stage of the research hypotheses are tested of the intervention of the clarity of responsibility on the economic voting. To this end, I investigate whether more transparent political environments - where policy decision making and implementation is concentrated in the hands of fewer actors - contribute to the process of assigning political responsibility. I show that clarity of responsibility is critical to the voter's ability to punish or reward the president for his performance in the economy and in social and anti-corruption policies. Quantitative analysis using data at the individual level allowed us to confirm the impact not only of the evaluation of the economy, but also of the government's action on social policies and anti-corruption in the evaluation of the leaders of the region. In addition, through the use of individual and aggregate data, it was possible to confirm that contexts of greater clarity of responsibility have a positive effect on the relationship between economy evaluation and government performance in public policies with the evaluation of the president's work