Desirable pork: do voters reward for earmark acquisition?

Abstract

The overwhelming majority of Congresspersons engage in the acquisition of pork projects, also known as earmarks. In the aggregate, the general public overwhelming opposes pork-barrel spending, yet scholars and Members of Congress both contend that earmarked projects make for grateful constituents. This work attempts to explain this discrepancy. Using experimental data, I show that general discussions of earmarks are not universally beneficial. Recipients are only moved when they are made aware of projects in policy arenas of individual importance. Thus, pork is a nuanced policy tool that must be wielded strategically to gain electoral reward from specific subsets of a constituency.

I Don’t Like It Unless It’s for Me: Voters’ Perceptions of Pork-Barrel Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

“…In his experiments conducted in Denmark, Bøggild (2016) observed that subjects respond to the reelection efforts of politicians who use the impartial distribution of public finances with a lower level of trust and reduced willingness to vote for these politicians even when they can benefit from distribution. However, this conclusion is not fully in line with the outcomes of experiments organized in the United States by Travis Braidwood (2015). In these experiments, "[r]ecipients are only moved when they are made aware of projects in policy arenas of individual importance.…”

“…However, as some other studies show, this mechanism may not apply under all circumstances; sometimes voters can tolerate or overlook unfair decision-making, especially in situations in which they themselves are benefiting from the outcomes of these policies (Braidwood 2015;Tyler 1990). As Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996, 191) noted, "when procedural justice is relatively low, outcome favorability is more apt to be positively correlated with individuals' reactions."…”

“…However, there is only limited empirical evidence to reveal voters' perceptions of this inherently unfair attempt to secure their votes. Moreover, existing findings are contradictory: it appears that voters may perceive a pork-barrel strategy both positively (Braidwood 2015) and negatively (Bøggild 2016). Nevertheless, little effort has been dedicated to explaining this ambiguity.…”

“…Our research fills in the gap among studies exploring the patterns in voters' perceptions of pork-barrel politics. Findings have so far been made solely in regions with long democratic traditions, such as Western Europe, the Nordic countries, and Australia (e.g., Bøggild 2016;Braidwood 2015). However, the perceptions of voters in countries where a higher degree of clientelism and corruption of political elites are characteristic have not been properly studied by researchers.…”

The role of ethnicity in the perception of pork barrel politics: Evidence from a survey experiment in Slovakia

“…In addition, perception of pork barrel may be positively biased if individuals benefit from such practices. The literature supports (Braidwood, 2015; Brockner and Wiesenfeld, 1996; Tyler, 1990: 98–102), but also rejects such a reasoning (Bøggild, 2016; Lind, 2001: 59–60). Nevertheless, the conditions of our experiment require us to consider this factor.…”