Bureaucratic Packing in the Brazilian Amazon: How Political Competition Drives Deforestation

What accounts for subnational variation in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon? Using satellite imagery data and a novel shift-share instrumental variable design, I explore how local political competition explains this variation. I show that electoral competition causally increases deforestation, especially in the presence of more private commercial interests that deforest. I argue that competition encourages mayors to pursue the strategic non-enforcement of environmental standards to cater to such interests. Drawing on qualitative interviews and administrative data on bureaucratic appointments, I show that to achieve this end, mayors use a strategy I term bureaucratic packing, a surge in appointments of new personnel to bypass existing personnel who may not aid the mayor’s agenda. In contrast to existing theories on the use of appointments for rewarding patrons, the analysis spotlights bureaucratic packing as an understudied strategy used to weaken regulatory capacity. Political competition generates incentives for undermining bureaucratic capacity to allow deforestation.