Electoral Mandates and Political Budget Cycles: Evidences of Brazilian States

The literature on political budget cycles indicates that managers able to run for re-election have greater incentives to manipulate public spending during election periods.. at way, the objective of the research consisted in investigating the influence of the electoral mandate on the public expenditures of the Brazilian state governments. The sample was composed by the 26 Brazilian states from 2003 to 2014, for comprehending the three electoral cycles. The regression technique with panel data was used as methodology. The research concluded that opportunistic behavior is restricted to first-term governors and manipulation is restricted to investments. There has been a shift in the composition of public expenditures toward investment in election periods in states whose governors are in their first term. This research contributed to the national literature by identifying the electoral mandate as a factor capable of influencing state public spending in electoral periods.