Electoral Institutions or Electoral Geography? Explaining the Regional Allocation of Public Investment in Italy 1994-2006

Abstract

Abstract A large and growing body of work in political science and economics is concerned with explaining Zregional favouritism[ in the geographical allocation of goods and services by governments. In such empirical studies of distributive politics (specifically pork barrel spending by governments) scholars seek to ascertain the systematic determinants of the differential distribution of goods and services between regions in a country. The underlying theoretical question is why some regions have greater political clout to influence allocation of funds from central to sub-central authorities. The vast majority of studies in this canon, privilege institutional explanations for variation in pork barrel spending. However such institutionally orientated arguments are often inadequate to explaining variation in use of pork barrel spending by political parties that operate in the same institutional environment. This paper examines regional Zpork barrel[ spending in Italy (1972-2006). We leverage the shift in electoral and legislative procedures after the Mani Pulite[ investigation in 1992-1994, to submit these institutional arguments to greater scrutiny. We argue that institutional explanations are inadequate to explain temporal and geographic patterns in the allocation of regional spending, in the post-1994 period. By contrast, our argument focuses on the role of parties[ electoral geography in explaining observed patterns in regional favouritism in different time periods. It presents an argument that has a long lineage in political science, emphasizing the role of strong, national parties in controlling the geographic allocation of public spending and reining in particularistic spending.