Yes, Minister: The Impact of Decision-making Rules on Geographically Targeted Particularistic Spending

Suiter, Jane; O’Malley, Eoin

doi:10.1093/pa/gst004

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…A literature exists which suggests that the primary aim of an incumbent government is to get reelected, rather than maximise social welfare. Suiter and O'Malley (2013) argued that political parties will often target distributive spending on particular groups of voters. They argued that, depending on the type of electoral system and decision-making rules in place, such public spending can be important for the re-election of certain candidates or to help a party achieve or maintain a majority in parliament.…”

Section: Governmental Self-interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, Lindbeck (1987) theorised that expected returns are maximised by targeting swing voters, as core voters' choices are generally between voting for their own party or non-participation. More recently, Suiter and O'Malley (2013) suggested that only once factors such as decision-rules have been taken into account can we assess whether core or swing voters are the primary target of partisan spending. Due to this uncertainty, we construct an alternative model of governmental self-interest whereby the policy maker maximises the welfare weight on those most likely to vote, ignoring the distinction between core and swing voters.…”

Section: Governmental Self-interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In reality of course, multiple decision makers exist within most governments, and so each may use a different distribution of welfare weights when making decisions. In addition, the electoral and decision making rules may affect the policy decisions made in government(Suiter and O'Malley (2013)), while other models of governmental decision-making suggest the primary aim is to build a bureaucratic empire rather than gain reelection. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address these concerns here.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Which households matter most? Capturing equity considerations in tax reform via generalised social marginal welfare weights

Madden

Savage

2019

Int Tax Public Finance

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Social marginal welfare weights play an important role in areas of applied public policy analysis such as tax reform. These weights reflect the values of the social planner, or equivalently the underlying social welfare function. A number of recent papers have questioned the "default" Utilitarian-based approach used to derive these weights, and have suggested potential alternatives. However, there are few examples applying these alternative weighting schemes to traditional, nationally representative, datasets, and in particular, few comparisons of how these alternative weighting schemes would affect the distribution of the welfare effects of a specific tax reform in comparison to the Utilitarian-based approach. This paper aims to fill that gap. Using the nationally representative 2009/10 Irish Household Budget Survey, we apply a range of alternatives to Utilitarianism in determining the distribution of social marginal welfare weights, and compare these distributions to that arising from the traditional Utilitarian approach. The alternative weighting schemes we analyse are based upon: the principles of Equal Sacrifice, poverty alleviation, government self-interest and the redistribution of "luck" income. The distribution of welfare weights arising from these approaches are found to differ appreciably from the distribution based upon Utilitarian weights. A simple indirect tax reform model is estimated and applied to the different distributions of welfare weights to investigate the sensitivity of tax reform recommendations to these distributions. Given the importance of social marginal welfare weights in areas of public policy analysis such as optimal labour and commodity tax design, and tax reform evaluation, we believe this detailed examination of the alternatives to Utilitarianism, and their application to a household budget survey dataset, is an important addition to the literature.

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Section: Governmental Self-interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Governmental Self-interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Which households matter most? Capturing equity considerations in tax reform via generalised social marginal welfare weights

Madden

Savage

2019

Int Tax Public Finance

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“…A politically influenced distribution of sport grants was also found in Ireland. Studies jointly mapping the period between 1999 and 2007 showed that districts that elected powerful ministers were awarded more resources compared to others (Considine, Crowley, Folley & O'Connor 2008, Suiter & O'Malley 2014.…”

Section: Theory Of Pork Barrel Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

For the Game, for the Loyal Partisans: Distribution of Sport Grants in Slovakia

Spáč

2016

Central European Journal of Public Policy

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Distribution of resources is at the core of politics. Although this activity is primarily economic in nature, the existing research shows that political representatives often use the allocation of public money to reward their allies at the expense of their rivals. This paper analyses a 2015 governmental programme of local sport grants in Slovakia that aimed to build sport facilities for children and young people. In order to avoid any political bias, the programme was established as a neutral mechanism with an anonymous evaluation of grant requests. The results of analysis, however, provide substantial evidence that the subsidies were given primarily to towns with closer political ties to the government while municipalities led by mayors from the opposition were nearly fully ignored. In addition, the presented social and economic aims of the funding programme were not effectively pursued. The paper thus represents a valuable contribution to the discussion of distributive politics, in general, as it shows that, despite the respective legal framework, the allocation of resources may still end up as a process fuelled by partisan interests.

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“…In Ireland, private goods can only be delivered via the executive. In some areas at least, ministers had no compunction about using government money to distribute targeted benefits for political gain (Suiter and O'Malley, 2011). The cabinet also dominates the legislative process and ministers can target laws to benefit particular interests, as Ray Burke tried to do on behalf of Century Radio (Flood 2002a, 62).…”

Section: Costs and Benefits Of Business Financing Of Politics In Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Business Financing of Politics in Ireland: Theory, Evidence and Reform

McMenamin

2013

Irish Political Studies

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This article takes a new perspective on business and politics in Ireland from the comparative literature on business financing of politics. It introduces a theoretical language based on the concepts of ideological and pragmatic donations and discrete and reciprocal exchange. It goes on to discuss the extent to which the Irish political system generates incentives for these types of behaviour. Its empirical core is a quantitative analysis of disclosed donations to TDs between 2002 and 2009, but it also exploits anecdotal and official sources. This study concludes that there has been considerable scope for the exchange of brokerage services in reciprocation for small disclosed donations. Current reform proposals will reduce but not eliminate this potential, especially if there is no enumeration of commercial payments and loans received by politicians and parties.

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Yes, Minister: The Impact of Decision-making Rules on Geographically Targeted Particularistic Spending

Cited by 12 publications

References 45 publications

Which households matter most? Capturing equity considerations in tax reform via generalised social marginal welfare weights

Which households matter most? Capturing equity considerations in tax reform via generalised social marginal welfare weights

For the Game, for the Loyal Partisans: Distribution of Sport Grants in Slovakia

Business Financing of Politics in Ireland: Theory, Evidence and Reform

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