Local Pork-Barrel Politics in National Pre-Election Dates: The Case of Italy

Political representation in the national assemblies isgeographic and elected representatives care about whogains and who loses in their electoral districts. Since legislators are re-election oriented, theirchances of electoral success are directly associatedwith the net benefits delivered to their constituents. In this perspective, geography is not only the basisfor political organisation and representation, butalso the hallmark of distributive politics. In thiscontext, it is likely that locally elected politiciansand party leaders standing in national elections wouldtend to cooperate in pre-election dates. In thispaper we argue that local administrators have anincentive to manipulate local government outlays inconnection with national election dates to enhance there-election prospects of their national party leaders. In particular, given the matching character ofnational grants with local investment spending, weexpect that in pre-election dates local policy-makerswould be induced to raise investment outlays beyondtheir standard growth rate. This would determineinefficient local public spending as a result of thegeographically-based system of democraticrepresentation. The case study under our investigationis the behaviour of Italian local policy-makers inconnection with national election dates.