The Role of Electoral Interests in the National Distribution of EU Covid‐19 Funds
Romy Hansum
Journal of Common Market Studies, 2025, vol. 63, issue 4, 1027-1051
Abstract:
Expectations are high regarding the impact of the extensive Covid‐19 crisis support ‘Next Generation EU’. Mixed experiences from established EU distributive policies indicate, though, that ultimate policy outcomes largely depend on national implementation decisions. This article scrutinises vote‐buying strategies according to which domestic governments exploit the largely autonomous national distribution of EU funds to target certain constituencies. To study national strategies, the analysis takes advantage of the extraordinary leeway given to domestic governments in distributing REACT‐EU funds, part of Next Generation EU. The encompassing quantitative analysis covers a large sample of member states and committed funds. The regression results provide no support that national governments distribute REACT‐EU funds to politically opportune regions. In a departure from most previous analyses focusing on specific member states, these findings suggest that vote buying is not the dominant strategy in the national implementation of all EU funds.
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13711
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:63:y:2025:i:4:p:1027-1051
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott
More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().