Pork barrel politics and electoral returns at the local level
- PDF / 988,489 Bytes
- 23 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 10 Downloads / 215 Views
Pork barrel politics and electoral returns at the local level Peter Spáč1 Received: 15 January 2020 / Accepted: 19 August 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Does the targeted spending of public resources provide electoral benefits for incumbents? Despite the attention of scholars to that question, the empirical results are mixed thus far. The present paper supplies insights into the electoral benefits of discretionary funding on local elections. I study the consequences of pork-barrel politics in 7355 competitive mayoral elections in Slovakia between 2006 and 2018, finding that more grants from the central government enhance the likelihood of mayors winning reelection. The same advantage applies to mayors whose municipalities receive grants in local election years. The effects of the number of grants obtained as well as the timing of their distribution are, however, moderated by municipal population. More specifically, a larger number of grants and resources obtained near the end of the mayoral term provides electoral benefits only to small town mayors but give no advantage to the mayors of larger urban areas. Keywords Distribution · Pork barrel politics · Elections · Local elections · Reelection · Incumbents
1 Introduction The question whether the selective distribution of public resources can provide electoral advantages to incumbents has been raised often in the scholarly literature. The general presumption is of a link between the allocation of public monies and the electoral fortunes of incumbents. However, despite the efforts of researchers to provide a clear answer, the empirical findings are inconclusive so far (Evans 2006; Leigh 2008; Manacorda et al. 2011; Klingensmith 2019). Although the literature on the electoral returns to public spending is growing, most studies tend to focus on only part of the question. Altogether, three gaps in the literature can be identified. First, most evidence comes from countries in North and South America, including the United States and various Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico (Alvarez and Saving 1997; De La O 2013; Ortega and Penfold-Becerra 2008; Stratmann 2013; Zucco 2009). Second, the preponderance of studies has concentrated on * Peter Spáč [email protected] 1
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 10, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Public Choice
national-level presidential or parliamentary elections (Calvo and Murillo 2004; De La O 2013; Evans 2006; Klingensmith 2019; Samuels 2002), which is hardly surprising given their general political importance. Third and finally, previous studies have relied primarily on the sums of money obtained by electoral districts as the explanatory variable (Evans 2006; Levitt and Snyder 1997; Stratmann 2013). While such a choice is to be expected, it may neglect other factors of funding distribution that could affect elections. In an effort to explore the question in more details
Data Loading...
