When Do Legislators Pass on Pork? The Role of Political Parties in Determining Legislator Effort

• Tác giả: Philip Keefer
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 174.93 Occupational ethics
• Thông tin xuất bản: 2012
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 296337
• Chủ đề: 1. Formal and Informal Sectors; 2. Institutional Arrangements O170; 3. Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720; 4. Shadow Economy

Tóm tắt

A central challenge in political economy is to identify the conditions under which legislators seek to "bring home the pork" to constituents. We conduct the first systematic analysis of one determinant of constituency service, voter attachment to political parties, holding constant electoral and political institutions. Our analysis takes advantage of data from a unique type of public spending program that is proliferating across developing countries, the constituency development fund (CDF), which offers more precise measures of legislator effort than are common in the literature. Examining the CDF in India, we find that legislator effort is significantly lower in constituencies that are party strongholds. This result, which is robust to controls for alternate explanations, implies that legislators pass on pork when voters are more attached to political parties. It has implications not only for understanding political incentives and the dynamics of party formation, but also for evaluating the impact of CDFs.