Elections and Government Spending

James L Payne

Public Choice, 1991, vol. 70, issue 1, 82 pages

Abstract: It is widely believed that electoral pressures cause legislators to favor government spending programs. This "electoral theory of spending" is shown to encompass two core hypotheses: (1) the electoral consequences hypothesis, which states that support for spending programs improves the representative's electoral showing; and (2) the legislator insecurity hypothesis, which states that greater electoral insecurity leads representatives to be more in favor of spending programs. A test of these ideas using spending scores for U.S. representatives in 1986 finds that neither hypothesis is supported by the data. Copyright 1991 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1991
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