We study the causes and consequences of patronage in Brazilian cities since the country's re-democratization. We test … patronage for public finances. Our data consist of the universe of public sector employees merged with their party affiliations …, and a dynamic regression discontinuity design is applied to disentangle patronage from the growing political participation …

evidence of the interconnection between two critical political components: state weakness and clientelism. State weakness … creates the right environment for clientelism to flourish. Clientelism sets in place a structure of incentives for politicians … and citizens that is detrimental to building state capacity. We show that vote buying, as a measure of clientelism, and …

Can campaign promises change voter behavior, even where clientelism and vote buying are pervasive? We elicit …

Political clientelism is often deemed to undermine democratic accountability and representation. This study argues that … economic vulnerability causes citizens to participate in clientelism. We test this hypothesis with a randomized control trial … typically have more resources to engage in clientelism. Our evidence points to a persistent reduction in clientelism, given that …