Ideology versus sociology in the Brazilian state politics

ABSTRACT The article proposes an exploration of possible determinants of the variation of health and educational spending in Brazilian states between 2002 and 2013, like the degree of economic development of the different states, as defended by the classical hypothesis of the political sociology, or configurations of the political framework, as the ideology of state governments and their alignment with the federal government, as considered by the literature of political science. The results support the validity of the central hypotheses of both literatures, which should stimulate the analysts to search for a unified theory of governmental behavior in the social area in the Brazilian federative context.