We inventory more than 150 studies of distributive politics in more than three dozen countries other than the United States. We organize existing studies under two theories: theories of democratic accountability and theories of government responsiveness. Studies that concern democratic accountability conceptualize distributive allocations as attempts by politicians to protect themselves electorally by targeting specific groups of voters. We identify four subsets: (a) studies of whether politicians target goods to core or swing voters; (b) studies of general political favoritism in targeting government goods; (c) studies of whether goods are disbursed according to the electoral cycle; and (d) studies of whether elected officials gain votes from the disbursement of government goods. We illustrate each with examples from the literature. We then discuss distributive politics as responsiveness to the median voter. This perspective entails a focus on the redistributive consequences of government policy and investigates whether special interests capture a disproportionate share of goods coming from government. To illustrate the utility of both perspectives, we analyze original data on electricity provision in India's largest state.

the university of trento, nuffield college (oxford), Washington university in st. Louis, stanford university, the Pontificia universidad católica de chile, and carleton university (canada). We are grateful for comments from members of those audiences and for additional comments by James alt, donatella della Porta, andrew healy, douglas a. hibbs, Jr., Lucio Picci, steven reed, susan roseackerman, salvatore vassallo, and andrea vindigni. the data were gathered by Miriam golden with support of the national science foundation (ses-0074860), the russell sage foundation, and the academic senate of the university of california at Los angeles. the data on malfeasance were originally provided by the gruppo democratici di sinistra-L'ulivo of the senato della repubblica italiana and are publicly available via dataverse at http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/golden. for research assistance, we thank daniel smith, Jonathan slapin, Matthew spence, and yuki yanai.

Standard cross-national measures of corruption are assembled through surveys. We propose a novel alternative objective measure that consists of the difference between a measure of the physical quantities of public infrastructure and the cumulative price government pays for public capital stocks. Where the difference is larger between the monies spent and the existing physical infrastructure, more money is being siphoned off to mismanagement, fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and embezzlement; that is, corruption is greater. We create this measure for Italy's 95 provinces and 20 regions as of the mid-1990s, controlling at the regional level for possible differences in the costs of public construction.

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This article examines the relationship between the legislature and the public administration in postwar Italy (understood as the period from about 1948 through 1994). Italian public administration is normally characterized as badly designed and inefficient, and government performance is usually classed as poor. I argue by contrast that bureaucratic inefficiency, excessive legislation and widespread bureaucratic corruption were features of Italian public administration that were deliberately designed by legislators and intended to enhance the re-election prospects for incumbents by providing them with opportunities for extensive constituency service. The underlying incentives stemmed from the candidates' search for the personal vote, essential for retaining public office. Differences in the laws regulating the financing of political campaigns explain why excessive bureaucratization in the Italian context also resulted in extensive political corruption.'For a country as prosperous as Italy,' reports a standard textbook on postwar Italian politics, 'the resulting quality of public services -education, health, social security, justice, transport -is exceptionally low'. 1 Not surprisingly, public dissatisfaction with the national bureaucracy and with political performance more generally has traditionally run high in Italy, much higher than in other West European countries. 2 Why has postwar Italian public administration and government performed so badly?This article argues that Italian public administration performed comparatively poorly during the postwar era as a result of the deliberate behaviour of parliamentary officials, who were concerned to enhance their own re-election prospects. 'Bad government' provided reasons for members of parliament to offer voters compensatory constituency services. It also enhanced the partisan political loyalty of civil servants, who were typically appointed on a patronage basis, by providing them with extensive opportunities to engage in bureaucratic corruption. While the overall system that emerged was not itself planned, the interactions and behaviours that underpinned it were strategic and self-serving.This interpretation is an application and extension of a model of bad government originally elaborated with the United States in mind. 3 It stands in stark contrast to at least two other interpretations of government performance that have been forwarded specifically to understand the Italian case and that rest on more general theoretical foundations:

This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country's 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation, we examine whether individually powerful legislators and ruling parties direct spending to core or marginal electoral districts, and whether opposition parties share resources via a norm of universalism. We show that when districts elect politically more powerful deputies from the governing parties, they receive more investments. We interpret this as indicating that legislators with political resources reward their core voters by investing in public works in their districts. The governing parties, by contrast, are not able to discipline their own members of parliament sufficiently to target the parties' areas of core electoral strength. Finally, we find no evidence that a norm of universalism operates to steer resources to areas when the main opposition party gains more votes. University. We received additional helpful suggestions from

This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country's 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation, we examine whether individually powerful legislators and ruling parties direct spending to core or marginal electoral districts, and whether opposition parties share resources via a norm of universalism. We show that when districts elect politically more powerful deputies from the governing parties, they receive more investments. We interpret this as indicating that legislators with political resources reward their core voters by investing in public works in their districts. The governing parties, by contrast, are not able to discipline their own members of parliament sufficiently to target the parties' areas of core electoral strength. Finally, we find no evidence that a norm of universalism operates to steer resources to areas when the main opposition party gains more votes. University. We received additional helpful suggestions from

The eight countries examined in this study—Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—have long been viewed as exemplifying “corporatist” industrial relations systems, in which union coverage is high, unions are influential and commonly have strong ties to political parties, and collective bargaining is institutionalized and relatively centralized. Many observers have recently argued that such corporatist bargaining institutions are everywhere being undermined by changes in the global economy. The authors, using data from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, test whether changes in patterns of wage-setting in the private sector are consistent with that claim. Although they find some signs that corporatist wage-setting institutions are in decline, they also find offsetting signs of the resiliency of such institutions. Overall, the evidence does not indicate that wage-setting in the private sector is undergoing a general process of decentralization in these eight countries.