Swing Districts Research Articles

The distributive politics of privately financed infrastructure agreements

AbstractPrivately financed infrastructure agreements (PFIAs) are increasingly being used across the globe, bringing private money into the delivery of public goods. How does introducing private actors to such a process change how we think about distributive politics? I investigate this question using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, uncovering a relationship consistent with PFIAs being used as distributive goods and exploring how the credit‐claim potential of PFIAs may affect their distributive use. My quantitative analyses (on 16 middle‐income countries) present evidence suggestive of a relationship between electoral variables and the likelihood of a PFIA being present in a district. In districts aligned with the national ruling party, PFIAs are more likely to be concentrated in swing districts than core districts. I find that this relationship is more pronounced for PFIAs that are more directly attributable to the government. My qualitative press analysis provides insights into how politicians use various features of PFIAs to create credit‐claiming opportunities.

Lesser of Two Evils: Allocating Resources to Opposition Districts in Pakistan

Though many scholars find that incumbent party legislators benefit from higher access to distributive resources than opposition ones, there is less attention on how resources are distributed among opposition districts. In most contexts, opposition districts cannot be fully cut off from funds and opposition legislators get credit for spending in their constituencies, which harms the ruling party. I argue that, in such situations, the incumbent party will discriminate between its own legislators and opposition ones but this discrimination will be based on opposition swing districts being punished rather than opposition strongholds. Using data on federal development funds from Pakistan and fixed‐effects estimators, I show that the difference in funds between opposition and ruling party legislators is driven by opposition swing districts while their core areas have similar access as the incumbent party's own districts. The findings further our understanding of distributive politics and have potential implications for long‐term development patterns.

Intergovernmental Grant Transfers from Central to Local Levels of Government in Ghana: Does Formula Allocation Prevents Political Influences?

This study examines how the district assemblies’ common fund grant is distributed among the local governments in Ghana to ascertain the objectivity of the sharing formula scheme created under the 1992 Constitution. The dynamic GMM panel estimation approach is employed for the empirical analysis with focus on new versus mature democracy and how swing and aligned districts tend to benefit from the distribution. Annual data on the fund disbursements and the election outcomes from 1994 to 2018 for 216 district assemblies is used. The findings reveal that average transfers to each district was Gh?7.54 million which generally increased by 9.4 percent in election years reflecting the opportunistic behavior of incumbent governments. Swing districts benefited more from the increase than non-swing districts, as the former received 4.3 percent more than the latter. Aligned districts in new democracy received, 2 percent more than non-aligned ones, while it was 4.3 percent more for swing districts in mature democracy. Therefore, the allocation formula is subject to political manipulations hence it is recommended that the unilateral appointment of the fund’s administrator by incumbent Presidents be reviewed in addition to creating autonomous public agencies to be responsible for the allocation formula and the fund administration independently.

Just as electable: Black Democratic candidates in swing districts

ABSTRACT Considerable debate exists in the literature about whether white voters are willing to support Black candidates for office, particularly in electorally competitive, non-majority minority districts. This paper leverages the 2018 congressional election – which saw six Black Democratic candidates win electorally competitive, majority white congressional districts – to contribute to this debate. Controlling for an array of congressional district-specific factors, I find that Black candidates performed no worse than white candidates did in swing seats. These results suggest that worries from party leaders that Black candidates cannot win in majority white swing districts may be overblown.

The electoral benefits of unemployment, clientelism and distributive politics

Abstract We show that in the month prior to the 2003 Argentine presidential election, the expenditures of an Argentine poverty relief program exhibit a partisan bias. Taking into consideration the number of potential recipients (the unemployed with children 18 years old or less), the counties that were ideologically against the incumbent received a disproportionately large amount of the spending. Hence, instead of targeting swing or core districts, as established in the distributive politics literature, in Argentina the incumbent targeted opposition strongholds. To identify these effects and to classify districts into swing, core and opposition ones, we exploit the 2001 crises in Argentina. In particular, we use the 2001 political discontent that led to 15% of blank and null votes to estimate swing districts. Finally, we also show that this tactical spending had an electoral purpose. In counties where it was arguably cheaper to monitor the recipients’ voting behavior, the spending was significantly larger. In return, the clientelist exchange took place in districts with greater spending and monitoring. Thus, the politicians’ incentives to design an appropriate poverty relief program may be at odds with their electoral motivation.

Redistributive politics: the case of fiscal transfers in Ghana

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of political influences on fiscal transfers from the central government to district assemblies in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachIt adopted a redistributive politics model and estimated the two-step system generalized method of moment using electoral outcomes, and transfers data for 167 districts which were classified into swing and aligned, from 1994 to 2014.FindingsThe findings reveal that Gh₵6.28m on average was transferred to each district annually, which tend to increase by 8.4 percent in election years. Further, the swing districts received 5.2 percent more than the aligned districts.Practical implicationsThe sharing mechanism is significantly influenced by political considerations as there exists a political budget cycle and a general dominance of swing effects.Social implicationsThe fiscal transfer system disregards the social principles of fairness and efficiency. Therefore, a wider consultative process in reviewing the formula is proposed; and this should be done in intervals of five years to minimize the indiscriminate adjustments of the sharing formula.Originality/valueThe paper empirically examines the political economy dynamics of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in a decentralized unitary system.

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

The objective of this paper is to model the incumbent’s allocation of efforts that maximize his electoral chances in the presence of both vote buying (persuasion) and turnout buying (mobilization). The existing literature on distributive politics concludes that political candidates should concentrate their campaigning efforts either on safe districts or on swing districts. This paper shows that when candidates can use both persuasion and mobilization strategies, and the ideology of voters is unknown to the incumbent party, a third option should be taken into account. In fact, the optimal allocation of resources—rather than focusing on safe or swing districts—should target opposition strongholds, that is, the incumbent should try to sway voters in those districts in which the challenger is favored. The intuition for this result is simple. Since the incumbent does not know individual preferences (he only observes the distribution of preferences in the districts), all voters in a given district look identical to him. Hence, when approaching voters in a district to buy their vote, the incumbent always faces the risk of buying the vote of his supporters (who would have voted for him anyway).

Political Economy of Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers: The Rural‐Urban Dynamics in Ghana

AbstractThis study examined the political economy dimension of fiscal transfers from the national government to district assemblies based on the formula distribution policy created under Ghana's 1992 Constitutional democracy. The two‐step system GMM for dynamic linear panel analysis was estimated from locational perspectives of rural and urban in relation to political swing and aligned districts. Data on annual District Assemblies Common Fund transfers and election results were used for the analyses from 1994 to 2014 covering 167 assemblies. From the results, average transfers to each district was Gh 6.28 million but it increased by 3.5 per cent in politically aligned rural districts and by 6.4 per cent in urban swing districts. During election years, the increases were even higher, precisely 5 per cent and 10 per cent for rural aligned and urban swing districts, respectively. These suggested that the government generally targets more urban swing voters than rural aligned voters. The allocation formula was influenced by political factors, as election years tended to be associated with higher transfers. The swing effects dominated the sharing mechanism. Therefore, to reduce political influence on the allocation formula, an independent body should be established to make recommendations directly to parliament. This should dampen the political influence of incumbent governments on the allocations.

Are Public Funds Used to Maintain Ruling Coalitions? Evidence from India

Political considerations can distort public policies in developing countries, making them less effective. While past literature has focused on incumbent politicians manipulating policies for reelection purposes in two-party settings, around 52% of the world’s democracies have coalition governments. In such settings, a national incumbent can not only allocate funds to woo voters pre-election, but also to buy legislative support from smaller parties post-election. My paper presents a simple framework formalizing these two mechanisms and tests it using a newly constructed dataset of district-level disbursements from India’s Total Sanitation Campaign. These two mechanisms give rise to two distinct patterns in the disbursement of funds: the “Buying Votes Cycle” and the “Patronage Cycle.” The former is the traditional cycle with a pre-election increase (60%) in the release of funds in swing districts for the national parties. The latter is a previously undocumented cycle with a post-election increase (55%) in the release of funds that occurs, as predicted by the model, only in safe districts for smaller parties. Both cycles are large enough to affect the timing of household consumption and hence their welfare.

The comparative political economy of the location of industry

AbstractThis paper studies location decisions of firms in an economic geography model with endogenous regional policy. Policy is determined by probabilistic voting under proportional and majoritarian elections. Different electoral competition give rise to different location incentives. Under plausible assumptions, the smaller region has a higher fraction of ideologically independent swing voters than the larger region. Majoritarian voting, by focusing electoral competition into swing districts containing the most policy‐responsive voters, therefore allocates more subsidies to firms in the smaller region. Compared to proportional voting, this leads to more firms in the region with fewer consumers. Proportional voting thus welfare‐dominates majoritarian election.

Comparative Trade Policy

AbstractCurrent research has found ambiguous theoretical and empirical results with respect to the effects of the type of electoral regime on trade policy. The present paper aims to reconcile the different views within a theoretical model. It is shown that the equilibrium level of trade protection can be relatively higher, as well as lower, under a majoritarian electoral rule compared with proportional representation. Trade policy is more (less) protectionist under proportional electoral regimes, as compared with majoritarian institutions, if swing districts are populated by relatively more (less) factor owners with stakes in the exporting sector. It is also shown that politicians optimally apply a lower (higher) level of rent seeking under the majoritarian electoral rule if there are relatively more factor owners in the swing districts with stakes in the exporting (import‐competing) sector.

Crackdown on Corruption: A Natural Experiment in Safe and Swing Districts

I investigate the theoretical and empirical effects of increased law enforcement on the equilibrium level of bribes for the case of Albania during the period of 2005-2010. My paper centers on harassment bribes, which consist of payments for public services that by law should be free. I model bribery behavior as a negotiation process between public officials and consumers. As enforcement increases, corruption prevalence can, in theory, increase or decrease. Recent policy changes in Albania offer a good natural experiment to test this empirically. Two events took place in 2007: local elections and an increase in fines against corruption. I examine how the 2007 fine increase for corrupt behavior impacts bribery. Data show that corruption is a bigger problem for poor people and since the left's political platform is more pro-poor, looking at the left-right governed district variation seems appropriate. Using a difference in difference methodology that compares safe left and right-governed districts, I find that a 10 percent increase in enforcement leads to a 4.38 percent drop in bribery frequency. As enforcement increases, quality of services does not improve and enforcement measures are less effective on the medical and education sectors.

State politics, tuition, and the dynamics of a political budget cycle

This paper attempts to improve the understanding of political budget cycles by first identifying a previously undocumented cycle in tuition and required fees at public four-year institutions of higher education in the United States. I find that tuition and fees are 1.5 % lower during gubernatorial election years than in non-election years. No similar cycle is found in private tuition and fees. Using a newly constructed dataset, I then explore the variation in electoral competition in gubernatorial and state legislative elections within states over time to uncover the underlying electoral incentives creating the cycle. The results suggest that the tuition cycle is not designed to increase the reelection prospects of governors as standard theories would predict. I find that tuition decreases during gubernatorial election years as the reelection prospects of the incumbent governor increases. Instead, the evidence suggests that popular governors use lower tuition as political pork to expand party power in the state by capturing swing districts in concurrent state legislative elections. I find that the magnitude of the cycle increases with the level of competition in state house elections and that the effect is concentrated among those districts held by the opposition party, particularly if those opposition districts are populated with voters likely to be responsive to tuition as a policy lever. These results reveal important dynamics about party competition within states in the United States and suggest that the electoral incentives driving political budget cycles can be complex.

The Politics of Intergovernmental Grants in Canada

In this article, we present the findings of a study on the electoral use of intergovernmental grants for municipal infrastructure. The study adds to the body of work on redistributive politics by showing that both federal and provincial governments use intergovernmental grants for electoral purposes. The study also shows that grant distribution seems to be skewed toward electoral districts hold by governing party and by legislators who are influential in their party because they have more seniority or they fill ministerial positions. Therefore, this finding does not match the predictions of McGillivray’s model according to which in a political system like Canada’s, grant distribution would benefit to swing districts.

Do formula-based intergovernmental transfer mechanisms eliminate politically motivated targeting? Evidence from Ghana

Various countries have adopted formulas for determining intergovernmental transfers as a strategy to limit the role of political considerations in resource allocation. In this paper, we investigate a formula-based system of allocating resources from a central government to local governments to determine whether the political characteristics of recipient areas have any bearing on their allocation. Specifically, we study the sharing of resources of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) in Ghana amongst the country's district governments over the period 1994 to 2005. We find evidence that the mechanism does not eliminate politically motivated targeting of the grants. Per capita DACF grants were higher in districts where vote margins in the previous presidential election were lower, suggesting that swing districts were targeted. We find evidence that DACF formula indicators and their weighting were chosen and amended to produce politically desired patterns of transfers.

Location equilibrium with endogenous rent seeking

This thesis consists of three essays in the fields of the political economy of international trade.Location Equilibrium with Endogenous Rent Seeking:This paper analyzes the location of manufacturing activities when regional policy is determined by endogenous rent seeking. Once lobbying for government transfers to regions is included in an economic geography framework with size asymmetries, the standard prediction that the larger region becomes the core when trade barriers are reduced no longer holds. The establishment of manufacturing production in the economically smaller region is increasing in the level of regional integration once trade becomes freer than a certain threshold value. When free trade prevails, the relocation of industry takes place up to the point where there are as many firms operating in the South as in the North. Furthermore, lobbying slows down the agglomeration process, whereas the home market magnification effect (Baldwin, 2000) becomes weaker.Endogenous Tariff Formation and the Political Economy of Trade Retaliation:This paper extends the notion of endogenous tariff formation under representative democracy by allowing for strategic interaction between governments. The model developed suggests that the ideological distribution in the electorate within a country affects the tariff setting behavior among its trading partners. The equilibrium tariffs in a country depend on the trade policy preferences of the ideologically neutral voters among such partners as well as on the distribution of their sector-specific factor ownership. Ideological shifts in the population which systematically alter the political power of different voter groups, or types of factor owners, in one country thus influence the tariff setting behavior in competing trading nations.On the Indeterminacy of Trade Policy under Different Electoral Rules:Current research has found ambiguous results with respect to the effects of the type of electoral regime on trade policy. The present paper proposes a solution to this indeterminacy. It is shown that the equilibrium level of trade protection can be relatively higher, as well as lower, under a majoritarian electoral rule compared to proportional representation. The framework developed in this paper thus includes as special cases earlier models reported in the literature. The equilibrium outcome is shown to depend on the number of voters in swing districts who own a factor specific to the exporting industry in relation to those who possess claims to the specific input employed by the import-competing sector. Using a cross section of countries, empirical evidence is consistent with this hypothesis.