Fiscal Consistency and Federal District Spending in Congressional Elections

Sellers, Patrick J.

doi:10.2307/2111685

Cited by 70 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…There are two possible reasons why we might uncover this result. First, prior research has found Republicans tend not to benefit from this type of federal spending so the largely null result here should not be too surprising ( 1997; Lazarus & Reilly, 2010;Sellers, 1997). Second, although the majority leadership has a strong incentive to maintain its majority and the power that goes along with it, cardinals and ranking members tend to be powerful independent of majority status.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…However, only some voters pay attention to pork awards, thus attenuating the usefulness of pork for reelection (Stein & Bickers, 1994). It is also worth noting that Democrats tend to benefit more from traditional earmarks whereas Republicans are rewarded for other types of federal spending (Alvarez & Saving, 1997;Lazarus & Reilly, 2010;Sellers, 1997).…”

Section: Distributive and Partisan Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Earmarks and Subcommittee Government in the U.S. Congress

Clemens

Crespin

Finocchiaro

2015

American Politics Research

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In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has focused on earmarks, the quintessential example of pork barrel politics. We assess the degree to which existing theories can explain the distribution of earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives. First, drawing on informal interviews with individuals on Capitol Hill regarding the earmark process, we argue that assessing institutional and constituency-level factors that affect the earmark receipts of individual members requires examination at the level of the Appropriations subcommittees. Second, we demonstrate that both distributive and partisan theories of legislative organization are applicable to the distribution of earmarks. Finally, we present results indicating that contrary to the conventional wisdom, most subcommittees do not distribute pork based on electoral vulnerability. Rather, legislators' status in the appropriations process has the most influence. These findings offer insights into the path forward as debate continues over congressionally directed spending.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Section: Distributive and Partisan Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Earmarks and Subcommittee Government in the U.S. Congress

Clemens

Crespin

Finocchiaro

2015

American Politics Research

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“…Ignoring areas where citizens are more likely to vote and to vote against the incumbent in favor of attending to areas full of active supporters would put members of Congress in significant peril and perhaps invite challengers. time rewarding their districts because of their majority status (Levitt and Snyder 1995) and fiscally conservative members do not perceive the same benefits from porkbarrel projects that fiscally liberal members do (Sellers 1997).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On one hand, areas with a partisan majority of the same party as the party in power may receive additional rewards due to control of congressional leadership (Levitt and Snyder 1995). On the other hand, Republican leaning areas may be less appreciative of discretionary spending because of fiscal conservatism (Sellers 1997). The Democrats were in control of leadership during the period covered by this study, so the expectations from the two influences are the same: Republican areas will receive less in distributive resources than Democrat areas.…”

Section: Control Measuresmentioning

confidence: 90%

Voting's Rewards: Voter Turnout, Attentive Publics, and Congressional Allocation of Federal Money

Martin

2003

American J Political Sci

135

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Scholars have had limited success empirically demonstrating the importance of political participation. This study shows that political participation matters because it influences political rewards. Political participation, specifically voting, acts as a political resource for geographic groups. Voting is a resource because members of Congress seek to maximize the benefits of Federal budget allocations going to their districts. Members of Congress not only try to direct resources into their districts, but they also attempt to allocate strategically those resources to the areas that provide the best return in terms of votes. Hence, areas within congressional districts that vote at higher rates will be privileged over areas that vote at lower rates. " T he blunt truth is that politicians and officials are under no compulsion to pay much heed to classes and groups of citizens that do not vote." (Key 1949, 527) Perhaps V.O. Key expressed most succinctly the understanding that certain groups are ignored by the political system because they do not or cannot participate in politics. Despite this conventional wisdom, scholars have had limited success empirically demonstrating the relationship between political participation and political rewards. Some researchers reject the notion entirely, instead claiming that because the policy preferences and attitudes of voters and nonvoters differ only at the margins, nonvoting has no clear consequence (Highton and Wolfinger 2001;Teixeira 1992;Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; but see Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 for evidence to the contrary). The first claim lacks evidence; the second ignores how political elites react to political participation in deciding who gets what. This study offers a clear test of the hypothesis that participation influences political rewards by examining the relationship between geographic voting patterns and the allocation of federal discretionary spending to those locations. In short, it shows that voting matters.

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“…The distributive programs were matched to David Lewis' data on agency structure and political appointments in US federal agencies created between 1946and 1997(Lewis 2003 The dependent variable is quite skewed, with many zeros and some very large values. Normally, we would use a log transform under these circumstances.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%