Geographically targeted spending: Exploring the electoral strategies of incumbent governments

Pork-barrel politics is traditionally associated with presidentialism, strong parties, candidate-centered elections, and/or developing democracies. This paper argues that vote-purchasing behavior by incumbent governments analogous to pork-barreling is likely to be universal. This paper develops a rationale according to which incumbent governments use their partisan ties to lower levels of government to pork-barrel effectively. This argument is tested and corroborated with original data on local government grant allocation from four Nordic countries – traditionally considered to be systems that are least prone to localism. Furthermore, the study also provides preliminary evidence that pork-barreling by incumbent governments is electorally rewarded and thereby a fully rational electoral strategy.