Liberals, Socialists, and pork-barrel politics in Greece

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Yannis Psycharis and Vassilis Tselios

No 1615, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: This paper analyses the role of pork-barrel politics in the allocation of public investment expenditures in Greece. It proposes a model which explicitly relates the allocation of public investment to electoral results using a unique dataset covering the period from the restoration of democracy in 1974 until 2009, just before the Great Recession that radically transformed the political panorama of the country. The analysis includes ten legislative periods marked by governments of the two parties that dominated the political arena in Greece: the Liberal and the Socialist Party. The results show that Socialist and re-elected governments applied more expansionary fiscal policies relative to Liberals. The two main parties also used different tactics when it came to pork-barrelling: while the Socialists when in government rewarded/groomed their electoral fiefs, the Liberals invested in areas controlled by the opposition to win over new votes or seats.

Keywords: Public investment; pork-barrel politics; elections; regional policy; Greece (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 P16 R1 R12 R42 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06, Revised 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg1615.pdf Version June 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Liberals, Socialists, and pork-barrel politics in Greece (2016)
Working Paper: Liberals, Socialists, and pork-barrel politics in Greece (2016)
Working Paper: Liberals, Socialists, and pork-barrel politics in Greece (2016)
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