Journal ArticleDOI
The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics
Avinash Dixit,John Londregan +1 more
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In this paper, the authors examine what determines whether an interest group will receive favors in pork-barrel politics, using a model of majority voting with two competing parties, where each group's membership is heterogeneous in its ideological affinity for the parties.Abstract:
We examine what determines whether an interest group will receive favors in pork-barrel politics, using a model of majority voting with two competing parties. Each group's membership is heterogeneous in its ideological affinity for the parties. Individuals face a trade-off between party affinity and their own transfer receipts. The model is general enough to yield two often-discussed but competing theories as special cases. If the parties are equally effective in delivering transfers to any group, then the outcome of the process conforms to the "swing voter" theory: both parties woo the groups that are politically central, and most willing to switch their votes in response to economic favors. If groups have party affinities, and each party is more effective in delivering favors to its own support group, then we can get the "machine politics" outcome, where each party favors its core support group. We derive these results theoretically, and illustrate their operation in particular examples.read more
Citations
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How Does Policy Deliberation Aect Voting Behavior? Evidence from a Campaign Experiment in Benin
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide experimental evidence on the effect of town hall meetings on voting behavior in the 2011 elections in Benin and find that the treatment has a positive effect on measures of turnout and voting for the treatment candidate.
Journal ArticleDOI
Political economics or Keynesian demand-side policies: What determines transport infrastructure investment in Swedish municipalities?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined investment in transport infrastructure in Swedish municipalities according to the three National Transport Infrastructure Plans of 2004, 2010 and 2014, and found that municipalities with a high density of voters at the ideological cut-point (middle of the ideological distribution) got more investment in the 2010 plan but not in the other plans.
Intergovernmental grants in Russia Vote-buying or bargaining power of regions? 1
TL;DR: In this paper, two hypotheses about the determinants of Russian intergovernmental grants are tested and strong confirmation for the first hypothesis and no evidence for the second hypothesis for the years 1995•99.
Journal ArticleDOI
Voters’ Responsiveness to Public Employment Policies
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how the distribution of public employment affects the electoral support for the incumbent government that allocates jobs and show that the average treatment effect on the treated is a 2 percentage point increase of the vote share for the ruling party at general elections and also find evidence of an increase in electoral participation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Performance Measurement as a Political Discipline Mechanism
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce a theoretical framework that accounts for the political context in which performance measures emerge and are implemented, and claim that superordinate governments use these kinds of performance measures as a political discipline mechanism (PDM) to incentivize the behavior of subordinate governments.
References
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Book
An Economic Theory of Democracy
TL;DR: Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout as discussed by the authors, particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote.
Journal ArticleDOI
Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition
Assar Lindbeck,Jörgen W. Weibull +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, balanced budget redistribution between socioeconomic groups is modeled as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties, and a sufficient condition for existence is given, requiring that there be enough heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate.
Journal ArticleDOI
Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game
Gary W. Cox,Mathew D. McCubbins +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the optimal strategy for risk-averse candidates will be to promise redistributions first and foremost to their reelection constituency and thereby to maintain existing political coalitions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Political Preferences for the Pork Barrel: A Generalization
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide a rational explanation for the observation of oversized coalitions, often approaching unanimous size, in the realm of distributive policies, i.e., policies which concentrate benefits in specific geographic areas (states, congressional districts) while spreading costs through general taxation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Incentives to cultivate favored minorities under alternative electoral systems
TL;DR: In this article, a simple game model is used to compare the incentives for candidates to create inequalities among otherwise homogeneous voters, by making campaign promises that favor small groups, rather than appealing equally to all voters.
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