Electoral Benefits Research Articles

Class and the Politics of Participatory Rural Transformation in West Bengal: An Alternative to World Bank Orthodoxy

Based on a primary field survey and secondary sources of information, this study analyzes the West Bengal experience of participatory rural transformation in relation to the changing class structure in a differentiated rural economy, the rise in class‐consciousness among the rural poor and the participation of different classes in the political process of decision‐making. Utsa Patnaik's (1987 ) labour exploitation criterion is used in order to rank rural households in class terms, alongside the standard acreage groupings. This study strongly refutes the neo‐liberal (World Bank) idea of social capital and civil society as sources of ‘people's participation’. It is argued that ‘people's participation’ is a meaningless concept, since the ‘people’ as a category includes different classes with conflicting interests. Though subordinate classes in West Bengal have achieved a higher level of class consciousness than in the past, and have resisted extra economic coercion, and while their political participation has risen, their involvement at the grass roots level of administrative decision‐making is very weak. Panchayat Raj has so far failed to initiate a second phase of institutional reform in West Bengal, encompassing education, gender justice and above all the co‐operative movement. This partial failure is the outcome of short‐term electoral benefit being given priority over and so undermining class struggle.

REPRESENTING BLACK INTERESTS AND PROMOTING BLACK CULTURE: The Importance of African American Descriptive Representation in the U.S. House

Despite considerable examination, scholars have yet to definitively establish the relationship between a legislator's racial background and his or her legislative activities. We assess the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation by discerning whether Black members of the U.S. House are more likely to promote group interests in their varied capacities as elected officials than are similarly positioned non-Black legislators. Our empirical tests utilize the most appropriate econometric models and techniques to analyze data from four Congresses spanning two distinctive districting regimes and incorporating several elements of representational behaviors. The findings are clear: Black members represent group interests more vociferously than non-Black members, including liberal non-Black Democrats from similar districts. Moreover, because Black members do not receive electoral benefits for engaging in such behavior, these legislators have policy-based motivation for representing Black interests. These results have profound practical implications for minority political representation and the future of identity politics.

Electoral Reforms, Membership Stability and the Existence of Committee Property Rights in American State Legislatures

One of the most creative theories advanced about legislative organization in recent years is Katz and Sala's linkage of the development of committee property rights in the US House of Representatives to the introduction of the Australian ballot. Katz and Sala argue that the Australian ballot – a government-printed ballot cast in secret that replaced a party-produced ballot that was cast in public – gave members of the House an incentive to pursue personal constituency votes. This, in turn, led to the rise of committee property rights as members sought to keep their committee assignments from term to term because of the potential electoral benefits they derived from them. In this Note we use the state legislative committee membership dataset collected by Hamm and Hedlund and their colleagues to test whether committee property rights appeared in American state legislatures at roughly the same time as Katz and Sala find they emerged in the US House. State legislatures were, of course, exposed to the same electoral innovation at the same time. But, while in some ways state legislatures were much like Congress as organizations, in other ways they were very different. Our cross-sectional data and the variance in important institutional variables they provide allow us to test a critical proposition about the importance of membership stability rates in mediating the rise of committee property rights. We also go beyond Katz and Sala's analysis by testing to see if differences in Australian ballot design (office column and party bloc) across the states influenced the behaviour of legislators in the way their theory suggests.

Ideological Centrism and the Electoral Fortunes of U.S. Senate Candidates*

Objective. The Downsian model of electoral competition with its individual‐level assumption of proximity voting by individuals implies that candidates in two‐party systems should perform better in elections when they adopt platforms more closely mirroring preferences of average constituents. Since extant analyses do not place candidates and constituents on a common ideological metric, they do not directly test the electoral consequences of proximity to voters. This study provides a direct test.Methods. I use the NES Senate Election Study to locate candidates and constituents on a common ideological metric and use ordinary least squares regression models to analyze the effects of candidate positioning on electoral outcomes.Results. Although stiff electoral competition may make it more likely that candidates gain votes by locating near average citizens, candidate proximity does not generally have a meaningful effect on Senate elections.Conclusions. Insignificant electoral benefits from ideological centrism may help explain candidate divergence in elections and has important implications for the nature of representation.

Redistricting Local Governments in England: Rules, Procedures, and Electoral Outcomes

AbstractThe Commission-based process of local government electoral redistricting in England seeks to balance the tensions between both neutral and party political and mathematic and organic approaches to boundary drawing. We evaluate the success of this process by assessing the impact of redistricting on electoral equality and the strength of the political parties in each local authority. On one hand, the Commission appears to be effective in achieving vote equality by reducing the variability between electoral units in the ratio of electors to councillors. On the other hand, the way that submissions are made to the Commission, together with aspects of social and electoral geography over which it has no influence, can allow one party to receive more electoral benefit than another from redistricting.

CONVERGING NATIONALISMS: QUéBEC, SCOTLAND, AND WALES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

In many developed post-industrial states increasing agitation for regional and subnational autonomy on the part of nationalist parties has increasingly taken account of the internationalization of domestic politics. One clear manifestation of this phenomenon has occurred in Québec, Scotland and Wales where self-described nationalist parties pay increasing attention to continental integration and have sought to exploit this trend for electoral benefit. This strategic choice is sensible but does not entirely account for the nationalist enthusiasm for integration. Economic and political globalization is acting as an independent variable, altering the discourse of domestic politics and particularly that of nationalist politics.

The Strategic Importance of State-Level Factors in Presidential Elections

While political scientists usually rely on national models of presidential elections, the candidates and their campaign staffs tend to focus on state-by-state strategies. This study tests hypotheses that presidential candidates and their parties can increase their support in specific states through the strategic selection of their national-party convention sites and their vice-presidential running mates. This study also assesses the common assertion that candidates receive an electoral boost in states with incumbent governors from the same party. Utilizing a normed model of the presidential vote in the states that serves as a baseline for assessing the importance of these strategic factors, the study finds that presidential and vice-presidential candidates receive an electoral advantage in their home states and regions. Generally, parties do not derive significant electoral benefits in states selected to host the national convention or those in which they control the governorship. Important differences are found over time and between the two political parties. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

An Analysis of Institutional and Political Factors Affecting State Capital Expenditure

This article examines state government spending patterns for capital projects during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a function of some of the institutional arrangements and procedural characteristics of state legislatures. The analysis is informed by the literature on distributive policymaking, which argues that lawmakers seek to send targetable benefits, such as capital projects, to their constituencies in pursuit of personal electoral benefits. Using a pooled, cross‐sectional time‐series approach, the authors find that states with a large number of seats in the lower chambers of their legislatures devoted a somewhat smaller portion of their state budgets to capital projects than did states with smaller lower chambers, ceteris paribus. Contrary to some log‐rolling models, the number of appropriations bills employed by a legislature seems to discourage capital spending, as does membership turnover in the upper chamber. This indicates that the capital budgeting process is not nearly as dominated by the executive branch as is commonly believed.

Money or your life

The rhetoric of governments worldwide is that they wish to ensure “value for money” in their health care systems. Yet in most countries there are examples of where this mantra is being violated, as governments trade efficiency for votes, committing highway robbery which gives them electoral benefits but damages patients’ health.

Partisanship, Blame Avoidance, and the Distribution of Legislative Pork

majority party advantage in the allocation of federal resources, a relation? ship seemingly at odds with the bipartisan support often enjoyed by distributive policies and pragrams. We reconcile this disjuncture by developing a partisan blame avoidance account of the distribution of legisla? tive pork. According to this account, the majority party inoculates itself against minority party charges of wasteful spending by including the minority in pork barrel coalitions. At the same time, the majority party, mindful of the electoral benefits of

Deficits, Democrats, and Distributive Benefits: Congressional Elections and the Pork Barrel in the 1980s

In this study, we examine the extent to which legislators receive elec toral benefits from altering the geographic distribution of federal outlays. Although there are both theoretical and anecdotal reasons to believe in the existence of such benefits, previous empirical work has largely failed to verify the connection between pork barreling and reelection. We ex amine House incumbents during the 1980s, when budget deficits were allegedly forcing legislators to end the acquisition of distributive benefits, and we discover that legislators did in fact reap electoral benefits from pork barreling in the 1980s. We further discover that there is a sharp partisan difference in the marginal effects of federal outlays: additional federal monies strongly affect Democratic reelection margins but barely impact the electoral fortunes of Republicans. This conclusion has impor tant implications for current debates about Congress, divided govern ment, and the recent Republican takeover of Congress.

Deficits, Democrats, and Distributive Benefits: Congressional Elections and the Pork Barrel in the 1980s

In this study, we examine the extent to which legislators receive elec toral benefits from altering the geographic distribution of federal outlays. Although there are both theoretical and anecdotal reasons to believe in the existence of such benefits, previous empirical work has largely failed to verify the connection between pork barreling and reelection. We ex amine House incumbents during the 1980s, when budget deficits were allegedly forcing legislators to end the acquisition of distributive benefits, and we discover that legislators did in fact reap electoral benefits from pork barreling in the 1980s. We further discover that there is a sharp partisan difference in the marginal effects of federal outlays: additional federal monies strongly affect Democratic reelection margins but barely impact the electoral fortunes of Republicans. This conclusion has impor tant implications for current debates about Congress, divided govern ment, and the recent Republican takeover of Congress.

Electoral and Financial Effects of Changes in Committee Power: The Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings Budget Reform, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and the Money Committees in the House

Most rational choice theories of legislatures locate the source of committee power in the restrictive procedural rules that enforce committee jurisdictions. However, there is no empirical support for this claim; further, there is little evidence for the natural implication that membership on more powerful committees confers electoral benefits. I address these puzzles by exploiting the occurrence of major budget and tax reforms in the mid‐eighties; these reforms provide a natural experiment for measuring the electoral and financial consequences of changes in committee power. I show that the procedural rule changes, instituted by the Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings budget reform, caused an increase in campaign contributions to members of the Budget Committee and led to a reduction in the vote share of members of the Appropriations Committee. This heretofore unrecognized effect, of the Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings budget reform on the welfare of members of the House, rivals that of a more widely recognized “policy shock,” th...

The Political Economy of Competitive Elections in the Developing World

Theory: Theories of economic voting are applied to competitive elections in the developing world. Hypotheses: The effect of the macroeconomy on electoral support for incumbent parties is mitigated by the impact of the economy on turnout and the relative sensitivity of voters to recession and growth. Method: Pooled time series data on aggregate electoral data for eight developing countries are analyzed using least squares with dummy variables (LSDV). Results: Economic decline imposes enormous electoral costs on governments, but economic growth provides no electoral benefits.

Citizens' Contacts with Bureaucratic and Legislative Officials

This paper draws on both the bureaucratic and congressional literature to develop and test a model linking bureaucratic dissatisfaction with citizen- initiated contact with members of Congress. It has been argued by Fiorina and others that bureaucratic malfunctioning creates opportunities for congressional intervention which aids constituents and reaps electoral benefits for elected representatives. While this view has been widely accepted by scholars, empirical research has scarcely addressed the question, and evidence to support this conjecture has been scant. Using data gathered in a particular congressional district (both data on actual member-constituent contact and survey data), results confirm Fiorina's contention that those who are unhappy with bureaucracy are more likely to contact members of Congress.

The Electoral Impact of Franked Congressional Mail

The franking privilege is a major congressional perquisite often assumed to produce electoral benefits for incumbents. In this study Professor Cover offers a model to assess the overall electoral impact of franked mail. He finds that while the impact does benefit an incumbent, it varies as a function of voter partisanship, and that while the recognition effect of a mailing is the dominant one for incumbent and challenger partisans, improved incumbent evaluation is more important for Independents.

Television Markets and Congressional Elections

This research examines the effects of the relative congruence of congressional districts and television markets on congressional elections. We consider propositions concerning the voters' information about and evaluations of the candidates, drawing on data from the U.S. Census, the Nielsen Station Index, and the CPS 1980 National Election Study. The findings indicate that market/district congruence increases voter information about, exposure to, and familiarity with congressional candidates. This increase in information works to the challengers' advantage and results in challengers receiving a greater share of the vote in congruent than in incongruent districts. Congressional incumbents derive electoral benefits in direct proportion to the incongruence of their district and television markets.

Political Benefits and Public Policy: Interpretation of Recent US Studies

A number of researchers have tested the general hypothesis that the spatial allocation of political benefits by the US federal legislature is linked to the electoral demands on congressmen. The evidence produced by these tests is equivocal. To account for this situation, the theory underpinning the electoral benefit hypothesis is extended to take account of congressmen's needs for political support.