Gabriela Garbi Bissacot

Trade policies in Brazil are voted on at the national congress and the decision to vote is based on political particularism. This variable, political particularism, represents the degree of incentive for politicians to decide whether the vote will be based on their own reputation or on their party's ideologies. The most recent trade policy voted in Brazil was on trade facilitation ratified with the Trade Facilitation Agreement in 2017. In this context, the objective of this research is to analyze how political particularism relates to the results of trade facilitation trade policy. To achieve the objectives, the panel econometric method was used with data from the manufacturing industry for the years 2013 to 2018. As a proxy for trade policy, two measures were used, the current of trade and the penetration of imports. The hypothesis is that greater particularism will cause the politician to vote in favor of policies that is the will of his majority of voters. The results show that the greater the political particularism, the more favorable the commercial policies to open the flow of broad trade, however when it comes to the penetration of imports, the greater particularism makes the politician not favorable to the commercial opening. It is concluded that in Brazil politicians make the decision to vote on political changes focused on the level of political particularism, so this variable must be analyzed when a trade policy is being voted on.