Distributive politics and electoral incentives: Evidence from seven US state legislatures
نویسندگان
چکیده
We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage individual legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US states, we study how the amount of funding that a legislator channels to his district changes when he faces a term limit. We find that legislators bring less state funds to their district when they cannot run for re-election. Consistent with the Law of 1/N, this tendency is less pronounced in states with many legislative districts.
منابع مشابه
The Senate Electoral Cycle and Bicameral Appropriations Politics.
We consider the consequences of the Senate electoral cycle and bicameralism for distributive politics, introducing the concept of contested credit claiming, i.e. that members of a state's House and Senate delegations must share the credit for appropriations that originate in their chamber with delegation members in the other chamber. Using data that isolates appropriations of each chamber, we t...
متن کاملA Swing and a Miss: A Study in Distributive Electoral Politics
This study focuses on the distributive politics of presidential elections. Specifically, I research whether there is an economic advantage to being a swing state. Current literature on the subject supports the idea that money flows into swing states during presidential election years because of the Electoral College. My findings proved inconclusive; most likely because of limitations in the dat...
متن کاملElection cycles and electricity provision: Evidence from a quasi-experiment with Indian special elections
a r t i c l e i n f o Available online xxxx JEL classification: D72 D78 H44 H73 Keywords: Electoral cycles Electricity supply Night lights India We present evidence from India showing that state governments induce electoral cycles in electricity service provision. Our data and research strategy allow us to build on models of political business cycles and targeted distribution in two important w...
متن کاملConditional Party Government in the States
©2002 by the Midwest Political Science Association A lthough theories about legislative politics continue to proliferate, their range of empirical application is all too often limited, generally encompassing only the U.S. Congress or even just the House. Here, we conduct what is essentially comparative research by testing theories of parties and committees in a number of state legislatures. Thi...
متن کاملLegislatures, Bureaucracies and Distributive Spending∗
This paper develops a theory of bureaucratic influence on distributive politics. While there exists a rich literature on the effects of institutions such as presidents, electoral systems, and bicameralism on government spending, the role of professional bureaucrats has yet to receive formal scrutiny. In the model, legislators bargain over the allocation of distributive benefits across districts...
متن کامل