Pork Barrel Politics

Author : Andrew H. Sidman
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231550405
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pork Barrel Politics written by Andrew H. Sidman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that legislators who bring “pork”—federal funds for local projects—back home to their districts are better able to fend off potential challengers. For more than four decades, however, the empirical support for this belief has been mixed. Some studies have found that securing federal spending has no electoral effects at best or can even cost incumbent legislators votes. In Pork Barrel Politics, Andrew H. Sidman offers a systematic explanation for how political polarization affects the electoral influence of district-level federal spending. He argues that the average voter sees the pork barrel as an aspect of the larger issue of government spending, determined by partisanship and ideology. It is only when the political world becomes more divided over everything else that the average voter pays attention to pork, linking it to their general preferences over government spending. Using data on pork barrel spending from 1986 through 2012 and public works spending since 1876 along with analyses of district-level outcomes and incumbent success, Sidman demonstrates the rising power of polarization in United States elections. During periods of low polarization, pork barrel spending has little impact, but when polarization is high, it affects primary competition, campaign spending, and vote share in general elections. Pork Barrel Politics is an empirically rich account of the surprising repercussions of bringing pork home, with important consequences in our polarized era.

Author : Citizens Against Government Waste
Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN 13 : 146685314X
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Pig Book written by Citizens Against Government Waste and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of: - $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa - $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil - $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri - $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!) - $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California - $1 million for ornamental fish research Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!

Author : John Hudak
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 0815725205
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Presidential Pork written by John Hudak and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presidential earmarks? Perhaps even more so than their counterparts in Congress, presidents have the motive and the means to politicize spending for political power. But do they? In Presidential Pork, John Hudak explains and interprets presidential efforts to control federal spending and accumulate electoral rewards from that power. The projects that members of Congress secure for their constituents certainly attract attention. Political pundits still chuckle about the “Bridge to Nowhere.” But Hudak clearly illustrates that while Congress claims credit for earmarks and pet projects, the practice is alive and well in the White House, too. More than any representative or senator, presidents engage in pork barrel spending in a comprehensive and systematic way to advance their electoral interests. It will come as no surprise that the White House often steers the enormous federal bureaucracy to spend funds in swing states. It is a major advantage that only incumbents enjoy. Hudak reconceptualizes the way in which we view the U.S. presidency and the goals and behaviors of those who hold the nation’s highest office. He illustrates that presidents and their White Houses are indeed complicit in distributing presidential pork—and how they do it. The result is an illuminating and highly original take on presidential power and public policy.

Author : Diana Evans
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521545327
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Greasing the Wheels written by Diana Evans and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines pork barrel projects and their relation to broad-based national legislation.

Author : Robert M. Stein
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521595841
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Perpetuating the Pork Barrel written by Robert M. Stein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-13 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stein and Bickers explore the policy subsystems that blanket the American political landscape.

Author : David Samuels
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139440179
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil written by David Samuels and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-24 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ambition theory suggests that scholars can understand a good deal about politics by exploring politicians' career goals. In the USA, an enormous literature explains congressional politics by assuming that politicians primarily desire to win re-election. In contrast, although Brazil's institutions appear to encourage incumbency, politicians do not seek to build a career within the legislature. Instead, political ambition focuses on the subnational level. Even while serving in the legislature, Brazilian legislators act strategically to further their future extra-legislative careers by serving as 'ambassadors' of subnational governments. Brazil's federal institutions also affect politicians' electoral prospects and career goals, heightening the importance of subnational interests in the lower chamber of the national legislature. Together, ambition and federalism help explain important dynamics of executive-legislative relations in Brazil. This book's rational-choice institutionalist perspective contributes to the literature on the importance of federalism and subnational politics to understanding national-level politics around the world.

Author : Linda R. Cohen
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Technology Pork Barrel written by Linda R. Cohen and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " American public policy has had a long history of technological optimism. The success of the United States in research and development contributes to this optimism and leads many to assume that there is a technological fix for significant national problems. Since World War II the federal government has been the major supporter of commercial research and development efforts in a wide variety of industries. But how successful are these projects? And equally important, how do economic and policy factors influence performance and are these influences predictable and controllable? Linda Cohen, Roger Noll, and three other economists address these questions while focusing on the importance of R&D to the national economy. They examine the codependency between technological progress and economic growth and explain such matters as why the private sector often fails to fund commercially applicable research adequately and why the government should focus support on some industries and not others. They also analyze political incentives facing officials who enact and implement programs and the subsequent forces affecting decisions to continue, terminate, or redirect them. The central part of this book presents detailed case histories of six programs: the supersonic transport, communications satellites, the space shuttle, the breeder reactor, photovoltaics, and synthetic fuels. The authors conclude with recommendations for program restructuring to minimize the conflict between economic objectives and political constraints. "

Author : Zygmunt Jan Broel Plater
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300195265
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Snail Darter and the Dam written by Zygmunt Jan Broel Plater and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVEven today, thirty years after the legal battles to save the endangered snail darter, the little fish that blocked completion of a TVA dam is still invoked as an icon of leftist extremism and governmental foolishness. In this eye-opening book, the lawyer who with his students fought and won the Supreme Court case—known officially as Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill—tells the hidden story behind one of the nation’s most significant environmental law battles. /divDIV The realities of the darter’s case, Plater asserts, have been consistently mischaracterized in politics and the media. This book offers a detailed account of the six-year crusade against a pork-barrel project that made no economic sense and was flawed from the start. In reality TVA’s project was designed for recreation and real estate development. And at the heart of the little group fighting the project in the courts and Congress were family farmers trying to save their homes and farms, most of which were to be resold in a corporate land development scheme. Plater’s gripping tale of citizens navigating the tangled corridors of national power stimulates important questions about our nation’s governance, and at last sets the snail darter’s record straight. /div

Author : Scott A. Frisch
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136531270
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Politics of Pork written by Scott A. Frisch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1999. This study develops a new way of studying pork barrel politics based on congressional behavior in the 1980s and 1990s.

Author : Edward Aspinall
Publisher : NUS Press
ISBN 13 : 9814722049
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Electoral Dynamics in Indonesia written by Edward Aspinall and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do politicians win elected office in Indonesia? To find out, research teams fanned out across the country prior to Indonesia’s 2014 legislative election to record campaign events, interview candidates and canvassers, and observe their interactions with voters. They found that at the grassroots political parties are less important than personal campaign teams and vote brokers who reach out to voters through a wide range of networks associated with religion, ethnicity, kinship, micro enterprises, sports clubs and voluntary groups of all sorts. Above all, candidates distribute patronage—cash, goods and other material benefits—to individual voters and to communities. Electoral Dynamics in Indonesia brings to light the scale and complexity of vote buying and the many uncertainties involved in this style of politics, providing an unusually intimate portrait of politics in a patronage-based system.