Coligações Eleitorais para o Legislativo Municipal: efeitos da alteração do número de cadeiras em disputa sobre o comportamento partidário

Abstract

The object of this research consists of the proportional electoral coalitions that aim the election of municipal representatives. The goal was to verify whether changes in the electoral magnitude (the amount of seats in dispute) affect the partisan behavior, in terms of the coalition’s ideological consistency. Our hypothesis is that in elections with a larger number of seats in dispute the competitiveness to obtain one seat is lower and in this scenario the political parties tend to be more ideologically consistent in their coalitions. In order to test this hypothesis, were observed the proportional coalitions formed in 2008 (when the rules that caused a reduction of seats in several City Councils were still in in force) and in 2012, the subsequent municipal election (when there was a general tendency of increase in the number of seats), which allows us an empirical observance of the coalitions in two distinct moments. The research has been developed in a quasi-experimental design, aiming to verify whether the change observed in one variable (the electoral district’s magnitude) resulted in any impact in our dependent variable (ideological consistence of the proportional coalitions), while other features (such as the electoral system rules) were kept constant. This condition also allows us to classify our observed cases between a treatment group and a control group (a sample among the municipalities of São Paulo that didn't have the magnitude altered). It is concluded that in municipalities that increased the magnitude, the value of the electoral quotient decreased, making it easier for the political parties elect a councilors, regardless of the increase in the number of candidates. This lower competitiveness didn’t bring with it, as an automatic outcome, a more consistent coalitionist behavior. On the other hand, among the municipalities that increased their magnitudes, the decrease in the ideological consistence values between the two elections was lower than the one observed among the ones without any change in the amount of seats. This puts the magnitude increase as a feature that, if not directly causing an increase in the coalitions’ ideological consistence, at least avoiding a higher inconsistence. Other variables had also impacted the coalitions. The contributions brought by this research are the creation of a original data basis, and the conduction of this analysis on a municipal level.