Jam-barrel Politics

Leonardo Bonilla-Mejía and Juan Morales
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Leonardo Bonilla Mejia

No 596, Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto

Abstract: We study the executive-legislative exchange of centrally-allocated and individually targeted benefits (jam) for legislative support in Colombia. We use data from road building contracts, roll-call votes, and a leaked document which allegedly revealed the secret assignment of road projects to specific legislators. We find that assigned projects were more expensive relative to similar non-assigned projects, legislators who appeared in the leak were more likely to be "swing" voters in the congress, and legislators increased their support for the president’s party after their assigned contracts were signed. The results are stronger for legislators representing remote regions, where political institutions are weaker.

Keywords: legislatures; distributive politics; pork-barrel; legislative vote-buying; spatial isolation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 H54 H57 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages 53
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-ure
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Journal Article: Jam-Barrel Politics (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cca:wpaper:596

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