📃 Brother Votes for Brother: The Effects of Pentecostal Political Influence in Brazil
Awarded LACEA’s Londoño Prize in 2023.
Media: uc3nomics (English); Nada es Gratis (Spanish).
Pentecostals are playing an increasingly important role in Latin American politics, supporting pastors and far-right candidates for elected office. In this paper, I use the staggered translation of the Bible into indigenous languages by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a 20th century US evangelical organization, to isolate exogenous variation in the growth of the Brazilian Pentecostal movement. Focusing on municipalities in which indigenous languages are spoken, I find that the growth of Pentecostalism had substantial effects on political outcomes, increasing the vote share of far-right candidates in presidential elections and the vote share of candidates associated with evangelical churches.
📃 The Catholic Church and Redistributive Conflict: The Effects of John Paul II’s Rollback of Progressivism in Brazil
Monica Martinez-Bravo,
Daniela Solá and
Guadalupe Tuñón
Papal transitions can lead to shifts in doctrinal emphasis within domestic churches. This paper examines the impact of such shifts by analyzing the Catholic Church’s rollback of progressivism in Latin America following Pope John Paul II’s 1978 appointment, which curbed the influence of progressive priests and bishops who had actively promoted redistributive agendas and supported numerous redistribution movements. Focusing on Brazil, where progressives played a central role in the landless movement, we leverage the staggered replacement of progressive bishops with conservative successors upon reaching retirement age, to study the effect of this rollback on land conflict. We find that the removal of progressive leaders significantly reduced land invasions, primarily by curtailing new conflicts under conservative bishops. This effect was most pronounced in areas where the Church itself was a major landholder, suggesting that conservative bishops acted at least partially to preserve institutional interests by limiting redistribution. These findings highlight how shifts in Church leadership can shape the conditions under which redistributive movements emerge or are suppressed, offering broader insights into the role of religious institutions in social conflict.
📃 Does crime increase support for far-right movements? The case of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro
In 2018 the homicide rate was reaching its historical record in Brazil and Bolsonaro ran for elections with an aggressive anti-crime platform. In this paper, I exploit a quasi-experimental variation generated by introducing police units in favelas near the Olympic facilities of Rio de Janeiro. For each census tract in Rio de Janeiro I show there is variation in the homicide rate according to proximity to a favela and whether or not there are police units installed. In addition, I show that the introduction of police units also had an effect on the votes obtained by Bolsonaro in 2018. Results suggest that an increase of one homicide per 100,000 inhabitants corresponds to a 2.8 p.p. increase in the share of votes won by Bolsonaro in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro.
