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We thank Robert Houck and Daniel Kheel for assistance, and Sherri Wallace for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Houck's work was supported in part by Theodore J. Lowi, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions. Kheel's work was supported by an endowment from Jonathan R. Meigs. Data were made available in part by the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Computing was supported in part by CISER. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, April 15-17, and in seminars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Princeton University. The authors bear sole responsibility for the present analysis.

Associate Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University.

Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Columbia University.

Abstract:

Based on analysis of data measuring the geographic distribution of federal spending and county-level economic conditions during 1985-88, we argue that Presidents target federal benefits to local areas to promote their reelection chances. Targeting for elites appears to be induced by patronage delegation implemented using elite appointments. Intergovernmental transfers are institutionally more complex than other kinds of expenditure, and so are targeted for elites and not voters.

How might a President manipulate the geographic distribution of federal government spending to help win election? Consider the following scenario. Shortly after he is first elected, the President rewards people who worked especially effectively in that effort, by appointing them to public offices. The appointees do their jobs but also use their positions to return some rewards in terms of federal spending to the interests and constituencies they represent. By midterm most of these appointees have left office (Heclo 1977, 103-104). After the midterm election, the President redirects some kinds of government spending to build support among voters for his reelection bid.

That Presidents use appointments to deliver political patronage is a well established fact (Tolchin and Tolchin 1971; Heclo 1977, 92-99; Macy, Adams and Walter 1983; Pfiffner 1988, 68-89). Patronage that affects federal spending most benefits the President electorally if it goes to those geographic areas where the marginal gain from each unit of spending is the largest (Wright 1974). We argue that such a pattern occurs in local federal expenditures (LFEs) during the Reagan administration's second term, subject to two essential complications that concern the timing of patronage-induced distortions in spending and the extent to which patronage is bound up with the institutions of American federalism.

The institutional complexity of many kinds of LFEs ought to make it difficult for anyone who is not immediately involved in the disbursement process to trace responsibility for the spending results back to the President. Among those not closely involved are most voters. The insulation makes it easy to please both local elites and voters.

A rich literature has focused on ``pork barrel politics'' and the U.S. Congress, but scholars have given less attention to the topic as it pertains to the presidency. Some have argued that ``bringing home the bacon'' is central to reelection bids of members of Congress (Mayhew 1974; Arnold 1979; Fiorina 1989), but it is not known whether an incumbent President faces similar demands. We argue that vote-seeking Presidents are concerned with delivering federal benefits to local constituencies, in the form of local federal expenditures (LFEs).

From the perspective of reelection, a President will care about the geographic distribution of federal expenditures if the distributional outcomes are going to affect his reelection chances. Either individual voters or elites who can influence the election (by organizing or by other campaign activity) may hold the President responsible for distributional outcomes. Direct responses by voters may require outcomes to be traceable to presidential decisions (compare Arnold 1990, 47). Traceability would mean that the outcomes involve LFEs that each voter can both observe and attribute to presidential actions. Elite responses may also require such causal and retrospective analysis, but the connection to elites probably involves quite different kinds of engagement focused on anticipated spending patterns. Presidential patronage may lead many elites to expect that they will enjoy special advantages in competing for LFEs when spending decisions are made.

In either case, if either voters or elites will trace LFEs to the President, then the President ought to anticipate this and try to target expenditures to secure the best possible electoral advantage. We argue that these targeted deliveries of LFEs are pegged to the electoral support--i.e., the share of the votes--the President receives or expects to receive in each local area. Before the election, targeting ought to be based on the support expected from each area. After the election, targeting ought to depend on the amount of support actually received. In our analysis we estimate targeting functions to test for these relationships. We use those estimates to try to determine whether elites or ordinary voters are the primary targets of presidential targeting efforts.