Abstract
The decentralization that took place over the last decades in Brazil increased the role of both state and municipal governments in the implementation of public policies, and motivated an increase in scholarship about subnational governments. These studies raised important questions and hypotheses; yet, comparative knowledge about state politics continues to lag behind. In an earlier research project, we investigated the effects of political institutions (in-dependent variables) over the allocation of public resources (dependent variable) in Brazilian states. The project advanced research on electoral and governance aspects. With respect to the first aspect, we explored the role of governors and political parties; electoral strategies; and accountability patterns toward state citizens. In the second aspect, we focused on local political coalitions, and the resources the executive resorts to build up legislative majorities in local assemblies. This research proposal continues and further extends this earlier research. It represents continuity inasmuch as the research goals and analytical approach continue to be the same ones; that is, to investigate state political institutions and their effect on state governments' choices in a comparative perspective. It also represents continuity as it proposes to conclude the investigation initiated by the earlier research project; particularly by completing the data collection efforts for those Brazilian states who were not studied in the earlier project, and by consolidating and enlarging the coverage of the political data set generated by the project. Yet this research also develops new questions, inasmuch as it reformulates some of the objectives of the earlier research, adding new ones, and introducing new approaches. The most important change originated from the perception that the analysis of politics wi-thin states demands an enlarged comprehension about state politics; particularly the relationship between state and municipal politics. This last issue justifies the inclusion of the electoral geography of states as part of the research project`s agenda. In this new proposal, a new emphasis is also given to the distribution of state bureaucracy posts among political parties as a way to manage legislative coalitions, and to the importance of intergovernmental transfers in public finances. All in all, though the research focus still is state political institutions, this new proposal brings a new emphasis on the performance of political parties within states. This emphasis is justified as except for the president, all other politicians are elected within their respective states. The investigation of political parties will follow the three classical areas of research on political parties, that is: their relationship with voters, their performance as a political organization, and their behavior in government. Finally, this research proposal also continues the partnership with the Brazilian Association of Political Science (ABCP), which aims to both consolidate and extend two important achievements of the earlier research project. The federative research network, which allows researchers from all over the country to work together on the same data set, and the political data set, already available to the academic community (www.fgv.br/cepesp/cepespdata), will continue to be disseminated to advance research in this field of inquiry. (AU)
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