 Local Public Choice in Representative Democracy: Which Theory Best Explains the Data ?Benoît Le Maux ()
Post-Print from HAL Abstract: This Ph.D. thesis tests the power of the median voter model against the respective strength of alternative models based on partisan politicians, bureaucracy, interest group and budgetary incrementalism theories. To execute this comparison, the four principal per capita operating expenditures of the French departments are used as dependent variables: (i) social assistance, (ii) economic services, (iii) maintenance of the road network and (iv) secondary schools. The overall conclusion made is that the median voter model is not the best model for explaining local governments' behavior. While the income and tax share of the median voter have together a significant impact on public expenditures, numerous econometric tests suggest that other factors significantly influence the French departments' policies. In other words, we cannot be entirely optimistic about the workings of local representative democracies. Keywords: Local Governments; Electoral Competition; Bureaucracy; Lobbying; Incrementalism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in LAP Lambert Academic Publishing AG & Co KG, pp.272, 2009 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00125753 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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