Giving the People What They Want? The Distribution of Earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives

Lazarus, Jeffrey

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00434.x

Cited by 55 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…257–59). Specific expenditures, such as the size of federal old age assistance benefits (Amenta et al, , pp. 524, 533), the dollar value of congressional earmarks (Lazarus, , pp. 341–42), and school district budgets (Robinson, Caver, Meier, & O'Toole, , p. 144). Bureaucratic activities mandated directly by the legislature; no article included any.Three types were measures made up of multiple instances of the first three , often described as part of a policy domain—a set of policies conventionally seen as linked substantively, organizationally, and culturally (Burstein, , pp.…”

Section: Approach and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Determinants of Public Policy: What Matters and How Much

Burstein¹

2018

Policy Studies Journal

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This article is a research synthesis addressing four questions critical to our understanding of the determinants of public policy. How often and how strongly do hypothetical determinants of policy—public opinion, interest groups, the party balance, and other factors—actually influence policy? Do some hypothetical determinants of policy have more influence than others? Does the way we measure policy affect our ability to explain it? And is there a connection between how strongly particular variables affect policy, and how much effort we devote to studying them? It turns out that variables hypothesized to influence policy more often than not have no effect. When variables do affect policy, researchers very seldom say anything about how much impact they have. Variables that convey the most information to policymakers about what the public wants have a greater impact than other variables, but it is less clear how the measurement of policy affects our findings. Researchers pay much attention to hypothetical determinants of policy unlikely to matter very much, and little attention to those likely to be the most important. Implications for future research are considered.

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Section: Approach and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Determinants of Public Policy: What Matters and How Much

Burstein¹

2018

Policy Studies Journal

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“…Associated topics of perennial interest include procurement set-asides (Rice, 1992); earmarks (Kunz, 2009), including concerns with "pork" (Lazarus, 2010); fair and reasonable profits (Kaiser & Smith, 1980;Perine, 2007); probity in government-vendor relationships (Walton, 1996); procurement consolidation or "bundling" (Ireton, 2003;Nerenz, 2007); and privatization and outsourcing (Fitch, 1988;Hefetz & Warner, 2004;Van Slyke, 2003).…”

Section: Public Procurement In the Mpl Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Procurement: Public Administration and Public Service Perspectives

Snider

Rendon

2012

Journal of Public Affairs Education

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Why is public procurement not a major topic in public administration education programs? While many scholars and practitioners acknowledge its importance, most master's degree programs in public administration do not. In this paper we document this discrepancy, investigate its causes, and provide two remedies to place public procurement more squarely in the educational mainstream. The first entails a description of public procurement from wellestablished public administration perspectives, which illustrates how closely public procurement is aligned with the field's traditional functions and issues. The second analyzes public procurement in the context of the "public service values" orientation of NASPAA's accreditation standards, which indicates the extent to which these values are inherently accounted for and manifested in agency procurement policies, processes, and practices. Thus, public administration might achieve a deeper and broader understanding of public service values by paying more attention to public procurement in its education programs. We conclude with recommendations for public administration schools that may want to (a) incorporate public procurement content in existing master's degree courses; (b) add a public procurement course; or (c) adopt a public procurement concentration for the master's degree.Public procurement occupies a problematical position in American public administration. While its importance is evident both in practice and in the scholarly literature, schools of public administration largely ignore it; only a few offer any courses, much less programs, in public procurement. Roughly 30 years ago, Phillip Cooper (1980) noted this condition when he called public administration's attention to the importance of procurement. Twenty years ago, MacManus and Watson (1990) called for procurement to be included explicitly in public budgeting and finance courses. Ten years ago, Khi Thai (2001) noted that, despite its importance, procurement content was not evident in public administration programs. Today, we observe similar conditions and make a similar call. We then conducted word searches on course titles and course descriptions (typically contained in either Word, pdf, or html files) for required and elective courses in order to locate courses with content in budgeting/financial management, public personnel management, information management, and public procurement. The following search terms were used: (a) for budgeting and financial managementbudget*, finance*, fisc*, fund*; (b) for public personnel management-personnel, human; people; (c) for information technology-information; computers; technolog*; and (d) for public procurementprocur*, contract*, purchas*, outsource*, privat*, project manag*. Four programs did not have web pages that listed either course titles or course descriptions. JPAE 18(2), 327-348 328 Journal of Public Affairs EducationFor public procurement-related courses, each time one of the search terms was located, we reviewed the course description to judge th...

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“…The significance of a demand variable is that it conveys a legitimacy to earmarks, otherwise linked to what Lazarus characterizes as distribution ''on a purely political basis.'' 25 He finds that political factorsFmember ideology, seniority, committee membership, and electoral vulnerabilityFmatter, but so does demand, as conceptualized and computed by Lazarus, though precisely how it is then brought to bear within Congress is not entirely clear.…”

Section: Earmarks: a Means To What End And For Whom?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rise and (Relative) Fall of Earmarks: Congress and Reform, 2006–2010

Doyle

2011

Public Budgeting & Finance

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Congressional earmark reform efforts began in 2006. This paper reviews the literature on earmarks and documents the rise and relative fall in earmark spending using four databases. It identifies and critiques earmark reforms, including congressional rules and initiatives taken by the appropriations committees and congressional party organizations. Rules and committee-initiated reforms were the most effective, producing significant improvements in transparency and expediting availability of information. The number of earmarks and their dollar value first dropped noticeably in 2007 after an earmark moratorium, then stabilized as reforms were implemented. It is premature to conclude that reforms will alter the policy content of earmarks or their distribution.

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Giving the People What They Want? The Distribution of Earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives

Cited by 55 publications

References 31 publications

The Determinants of Public Policy: What Matters and How Much

The Determinants of Public Policy: What Matters and How Much

Public Procurement: Public Administration and Public Service Perspectives

The Rise and (Relative) Fall of Earmarks: Congress and Reform, 2006–2010

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