The effects of economy and Operation Car Wash on the popularity of President Dilma Rousseff in the pre-impeachment period

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

The article tests the economic theory of vote choice and the effects of corruption report on the impeachment processes of presidents of the Republic. Latin American literature on impeachment points out four conditions for presidential deposition to take place: 1) economic policy stressing fiscal adjustment; 2) president’s involvement in corruption scandals; 3) lack of political support in the national legislative power and 4) public opinion against the president resulting in street protests. We tried to identify the reasons why Dilma Rousseff lost its popularity, a background condition for her impeachment by the Brazilian National Congress in 2016. Our hypotheses is that a) the negative evaluation of the economy; b) the perception of economic crisis as one of the three most important problems of the country and c) the perception of corruption as also one of the three most important problems of the country influenced the disapproval to Dilma Rousseff’s government.

Materials and Methods:

Data were gathered from surveys made by Ibope Institute in March, August and November 2015. We elaborated six ordered logit models to test the hypothesis.

Results:

We managed to observe that the three variables had an impact in the evaluation of Dilma Rousseff’s government, so confirming the “popular shield” ideia by Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, according to which the dissatisfaction with president’s performance on the economy makes him or her vulnerable before public opinion when there are reports of corruption.

Discussion:

The loss of the “popular shield” then encourages member of the Congress to support the impeachment process and thus move it forward.

Keywords:
presidential impeachment; economic vote; corruption scandals; public opinion; Workers’ Party (PT)