The Provision of Public Goods Under Alternative Electoral Incentives

Lizzeri, Alessandro; Persico, Nicola

doi:10.1257/aer.91.1.225

Cited by 638 publications

(412 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In particular, winnertakes-all systems create incentives to target constituencies that are likely to be pivotal (Lizzeri and Persico, 2001;Persson and Tabellini, 2004). In other words, battleground districts may be favored both in public policy and campaign resources allocation (Snyder, 1989;Stromberg, 2005).…”

Section: Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Models of Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship

Larcinese¹,

Snyder²,

Testa³

2012

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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This paper tests various hypotheses about distributive politics by studying the distribution of federal spending across U.S. states over the period . We improve on previous work by using survey data to measure the share of voters in each state that are Democrats, Republicans, and independents, or liberals, conservatives and moderates. We find no evidence that the allocation of federal spending to the states is distorted by strategic manipulation to win electoral support. States with many swing voters are not advantaged compared to states with more loyal voters, nor do "battleground states" attract more federal funds. Moreover, we find that spending has little or no effect on voters' choices, whereas partisanship and ideology have massive effects.

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Section: Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Models of Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship

Larcinese¹,

Snyder²,

Testa³

2012

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…This article has received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: CSO2013-40870-R. Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse. harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS.1 Iversen and Soskice 2006;Lizzeri and Persico 2001;Persson and Tabellini 2002. 2 Beramendi 2012Rickard 2009Rickard , 2012Rodden 2010.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

Jurado¹,

León²

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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There is a large body of research showing that the provision of social policies is higher under proportional electoral systems than under majoritarian systems. This article helps advance this literature by showing that the geographic distribution of social recipients plays an essential role in moderating the impact of electoral institutions on social provision. Using data from twenty-two OECD countries, the results show that majoritarian systems increase the provision of social spending when recipients are concentrated in certain regions. When levels of concentration are high, social spending in majoritarian countries can surpass levels of provision in proportional representation systems.Keywords: electoral systems; social spending; political geography; unemployment concentrationThe literature in political economy has shown that electoral rules are essential to explain the composition and levels of public spending across countries. In particular, many authors have argued that the provision of social policies will be higher in proportional representation (PR) electoral systems compared to majoritarian ones. However, a key assumption in most important theoretical works is that the population is homogeneous or perfectly segregated across districts. 1 Yet public policies have beneficiaries that are not necessarily homogeneously spread across territories. This means that the theoretical relationship between electoral rules and public spending might not generally hold. Our article contributes to developing these caveats by studying whether the effect of electoral rules on governments' provision of public spending is contingent on the geography of social recipients. More specifically, we hypothesize that the incentives to provide social spending in majoritarian systems will increase when social recipients are geographically concentrated. We test this argument with data on social spending in twenty-two OECD countries and find supportive evidence. The empirical evidence suggests that geographic clustering can bring social spending in majoritarian systems to levels equal to those in PR systems.This article speaks to recent developments in political economy that explore the role of economic and political geography in redistribution, representation and policy provision. 2 More specifically, our theoretical argument is in line with several studies that focus on the joint role of geography and electoral institutions in the provision of certain policies, such as trade, 3 * Department of Politics, University of York (email: ignacio.jurado@york.ac.uk); Department of Politics, University of York (email: sandra.leon@york.ac.uk). We would like to thank Francesc Amat, Joaquín Artés, Pablo Beramendi, Albert Falcó-Gimeno, Tim Hicks, David Rueda, Scott Siegel, and David Soskice for helpful comments on earlier versions of this project. This article has received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness: CSO2013-40870-R. Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse. harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS...

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“…This stands in contrast to the study of other policy fields. In the area of fiscal policy, for instance, which also provides a mechanism of intergenerational resource transfer via the accumulation of public debt, the influence of electoral institutions (see Austen-Smith (2000); Lizzeri and Persico (2001)), the dynamics of political competition (see Tabellini (1999, 2003)) and the impact of legislative bargaining (see Ferejohn and Krehbiel (1987); Persson et al (2000); Grossman and Helpman (2008)) have been more extensively analyzed and empirically tested. These politi-cal models have contributed quite significantly to our understanding of fiscal policy and the evolution of deficits and debts.…”

Section: So Far Not So Goodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Models that offer more institutional details about governments' formation and decision-making processes are desireable but would be exponentially more complicated and risk compromising analytical clarity. However, we do know from the existing literature on fiscal policy decision-making that the institutions of electoral competition and legislative bargaining may have a big impact on actual policy outcomes (see Lizzeri and Persico (2001); Tabellini (2000, 2003).…”

Section: The Bottom-line: Politics Matter But Are Hard To Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With respect to fiscal policy, it has been shown theoretically and empirically that countries with majoritarian electoral rules spend less on public goods and have smaller governments than countries operating under proportional representation (see Lizzeri and Persico (2001);Milesi-Ferretti et al (2002); Tabellini (1999, 2003)). Some have also argued that the latter system is more likely to suffer from high government indebtedness, since it usually leads to coalition governments, which are prone to common pool dilemmas (see Hallerberg and Hagen (1997)).…”

Section: The Point Of Departurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Political Preferences and the Aging of Populations

Pamp¹

2015

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The Provision of Public Goods Under Alternative Electoral Incentives

Cited by 638 publications

References 17 publications

Testing Models of Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship

Testing Models of Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship

Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

Political Preferences and the Aging of Populations

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