Electoral Systems, Pork Provision and Social Spending

• In Event: Unequal Representation and Its Consequences in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The relationship between electoral systems and patterns of public spending is of longstanding interest to scholars of comparative political economy. The dominant view is that single-member systems create incentives for legislators to provide geographically targeted benefits (pork) for constituents in their district, while proportional representation (PR) systems create incentives for legislators to provide more universal policies such as social insurance. Because of the infrequency with which countries change their electoral systems, most studies have difficulty plausibly distinguishing the effects of electoral systems from the effects of other variables that may also influence patterns of public spending. Likewise, existing studies do not directly measure the hypothesized patterns of legislator behavior, relying instead on variables such as aggregate spending outlays. To assess the causal effect of electoral systems on legislator behavior, we exploit a novel dataset of campaign promises and spending proposals by French legislators in the Third Republic that spans a period characterized by two electoral changes: a transition from single-member to proportional representation and its reversal. We find that legislators devote greater effort to the provision of geographically targeted pork under proportional representation than under single-member electoral rules. In line with the views of critics of proportional representation at the time and one strand of the contemporary formal literature on electoral systems, we argue that this reflects the incentives created by open-list PR for legislators to engage in intra-party competition by providing targeted benefits to their constituents. In short, the common contrast between PR and single-member systems is misleading: open-list PR appears to generate stronger incentives for pork provision than single-member systems. This calls for a revaluation of existing theoretical and empirical scholarship on the role of electoral systems in shaping distributive outcomes.

Authors

• Isabela Mares, Yale University

• Alexander Trubowitz

• Emily A. Sellars, Yale University