The Effect of Electoral Geography on Pork Barreling in Bicameral Legislatures

Jowei Chen

American Journal of Political Science, 2010, vol. 54, issue 2, 301-322

Abstract: How does the electoral geography of legislative districts affect pork barreling? This article presents a formal model extending Mayhew's classic credit‐claiming theory to account for the electoral geography of bicameralism. Under bicameralism, upper chamber (Senate) and lower chamber (Assembly) legislators who share overlapping constituencies must collaborate to bring home pork projects. Collaboration is easier between a Senator and an Assembly Member who share a large fraction of their constituents and thus have relatively aligned electoral incentives. But dividing a Senate district into a larger number of Assembly district fragments misaligns these electoral incentives for collaboration, thus reducing equilibrium pork spending. Hence, increased Senate district fragmentation causes a decrease in equilibrium spending. I exploit the 2002 New York Senate expansion as a natural experiment, examining how sudden changes in the geographic fragmentation of Senate districts account for differences in the distribution of pork earmarks immediately before and after the redrawing of district boundaries.

Date: 2010
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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00432.x

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:54:y:2010:i:2:p:301-322

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