Voter Behavior and Seniority Advantage in Pork Barrel Politics

Rodet, Cortney S.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1923982

Cited by 1 publication

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References 22 publications

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“…Experimental evidence has shown that seniority is important to voters when they face a tradeoff between monetary benefits and policy representation (Rodet 2011), so there is also reason to believe that it matters when a voter must choose between a legislator who "does the right thing" or one who is known for "feathering his own nest" (Stigler 1971). …”

Section: Seniority and Voter Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The reader can find the instructions in the appendix. The parameters were chosen to be consistent with the pork-barrel experiment used in Rodet (2011). The general set up was ten legislators and five districts with three voters each ( , , and ).…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Term limits have been proposed as a way to mitigate the incentives created by seniority; however, Rodet (2011) experimentally tests such an institution and it suffers from the same natural difficulty that information revelation did here, namely the collective action problem of changing the status quo. On average, voters seemed to perceive that term limits reduced the cost of replacing an incumbent with seniority power, but re-election rates were not affected.…”

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Fact Finding Trips to Italy: An Experimental Investigation of Voter Incentives

Rodet

2011

SSRN Journal

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-AbstractThis paper addresses the interaction of voter information and seniority on electoral accountability. We test whether information leads voters to be less tolerant of moral hazard in a legislative system favoring seniority. A simple game theoretic model is used to predict outcomes in a pork-barrel experiment where subjects act as legislators and voters. Senior legislators have an advantage in providing transfers which presents the opportunity to shirk where legislators can enrich themselves at the expense of voters. Voter information about incumbent behavior is varied across experimental treatments. We find that accountability increases when voters can compare their own legislator"s behavior to the behavior of others. Despite the fact that voters succumb to the incentives of seniority, information is effective in deterring legislator shirking.

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Section: Seniority and Voter Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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