If your local mayor doesn't have enough votes in the city council, your local government is about to get 53.7% bigger and significantly worse.
April 15, 2026
Original Paper
The Costs of Running a Minority Government
SSRN · 6282778
The Takeaway
We often think political gridlock just means nothing gets done, but in Brazilian municipalities, it leads to a very specific and quantifiable 'corruption' mechanism. Mayors who govern with a legislative minority hire 53.7% more non-tenured civil servants and spend 70.7% more on their wages just to maintain their political standing. This isn't about improving services; it is about using public jobs as a currency to buy the cooperation of political opponents. This practice leads to a persistent and measurable decline in how well the bureaucracy actually performs for regular people. It reveals that political weakness at the top is a direct, mathematical cause of government bloat and failure at the bottom.
From the abstract
In non-parliamentary political systems, the executive and legislative branches can be controlled by opposing coalitions. I study how this political misalignment shapes fiscal and bureaucratic behavior. Using a regression discontinuity design for Brazilian municipalities, I find that mayors who govern with a legislative minority hire 53.7 percent more non-tenured civil servants and spend 70.7 percent more on their wages compared to mayors who hold a legislative majority. Survey evidence from teac