National Subversion of Supranational Goals: ‘Pork-Barrel’ Politics and EU Regional Aid

Stephen Bloom and Vladislava Petrova

Europe-Asia Studies, 2013, vol. 65, issue 8, 1599-1620

Abstract: The structural funds were designed to give the European Commission supranational control over where regional aid was spent. In this article, we argue that domestic ‘pork-barrel’ politics determine which regions are awarded regional aid in the new member states of Eastern Europe. Support for our argument comes from a dataset that includes 1,688 European Regional Development Fund grants to Latvia's 118 regions and 1,533 pre-accession Phare awards to Bulgaria's 264 municipalities. In both Bulgaria and Latvia, we find that regional aid projects went to wealthier not poorer localities, and to those that supported coalition parties in the previous election.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2013.833014

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