Multi-Office Incumbency Advantage: Political Careers in Brazil

Abstract

Incumbency may have effects on a political career that go beyond increasing the probability of reelection. In particular, incumbency may affect the probability of winning different political offices. So far, the literature has not looked at these multi-office incumbency effects. In contexts where politicians move frequently to other offices, ignoring multi-office advantages may generate biased estimates of the true effect of holding a political office on the success of one's career. We define Multi-Office Incumbency Advantage and study it using a novel data set that tracks all Brazilian politicians, from local councillor to federal legislator, from 1994 to 2010. Furthermore, we use our results to evaluate two standing hypothesis regarding Brazilian politics. The first is that there is an incumbency disadvantage in Brazil. The second is the hypothesis * A previous version of this paper circulated under the title 'Incumbency Effects in Brazilian Mayoral Elections: A Regression Discontinuity Design'.

Candidate Experience and Electoral Success

“…Candidates who run and lose in higher-level elections are more likely to win future elections at lower levels. Like De Magalhães and Hirvonen (2014), we find that candidates at lower levels who run and lose are not more likely to win higher-level elections.…”

“…The comparative literature on candidate quality has similarly understated the importance of previous candidate experience. Studies largely have focused on candidate quality much in the way it is studied in the United States, defined as having previous experience in elected and nonelected public offices (e.g., Bohn 2007;Hobolt and Høyland 2011;Langston and Aparicio-Castillo 2011;De Magalhães and Hirvonen 2014;De Magalhães 2015), and finding that it has a positive effect on electoral performance. For example, De Magalhães and Hirvonen (2014) study how competing and winning office for mayor and state deputy in Brazil affects the electoral performance of these candidates when running for other offices.…”

“…Studies largely have focused on candidate quality much in the way it is studied in the United States, defined as having previous experience in elected and nonelected public offices (e.g., Bohn 2007;Hobolt and Høyland 2011;Langston and Aparicio-Castillo 2011;De Magalhães and Hirvonen 2014;De Magalhães 2015), and finding that it has a positive effect on electoral performance. For example, De Magalhães and Hirvonen (2014) study how competing and winning office for mayor and state deputy in Brazil affects the electoral performance of these candidates when running for other offices. They find that running for state deputy and winning has a positive and significant association with the electoral performance of these candidates when they run for federal deputy (although this relationship disappears over time), and running for mayor and winning increases the probability of winning future state deputy elections (although this only holds for a subgroup of municipalities).…”

Length of candidate lists and political careers: Quasi-experimental evidence from Brazil

“…In particular, candidates who have already been successfully tested at the polls have the greatest electoral potential (Cirone et al, 2021; Fiva and Røhr, 2018), especially in Brazil, given the high levels of incumbency advantage of candidates in the legislature (Avelino et al, 2022; Meira, 2020; Meireles, 2019). In addition to incumbents, candidates with office-holding experience (winners) also have electoral advantages, even when running for different political offices (multi-office incumbency advantage, see Magalhaes and Hirvonen (2015)). Thus, such candidates “tend to be favored by the political parties when they face the final filter of the elections” (Perissinotto and Bolognesi, 2010: 12).…”

Restrição partidária às decisões de carreira de políticos brasileiros: evidências de vereadores brasileiros

“…Dentre os trabalhos que analisam as decisões de carreira de vereadores, o principal a se destacar é o de Magalhães & Hirvonen (2015) dada a sua abrangência (tanto territorial -pois cobre todo o país -quanto temporal -ao abranger eleições entre 1994 e 2010). Os autores identificam que parte significativa dos vereadores disputam a reeleição e estes obtiveram uma considerável taxa de sucesso, assim como os ocupantes dos demais cargos legislativos.…”