The electoral college and presidential particularism

Congressional scholars have long observed that electoral incentives encourage Members of Congress to prioritize the needs of their local constituencies over those of the nation as a whole. Indeed many analysts have pointed to increasingly gerrymandered and ideologically extreme districts as a major cause for the current dysfunction in Congress. As a result, scholars from across subfields have called for increased delegation of policymaking authority to the President as a partial solution to our current malaise. We argue, however, that inequality embedded into the very structure of our presidential electoral system incentivizes Presidents to also engage in particularistic politics. That is, Presidents, like Members of Congress, routinely pursue policies that disproportionately benefit Americans in constituencies likely to be most important in the next election. In this Article, we review evidence for such electorally induced particularism in the allocation of federal grants, the imposition of protectionist tariffs, and the provision of federal aid to states following natural disasters. While Presidents have always had incentives to engage in particularistic policies, the electoral incentives to do so have increased in recent years as the margins in presidential races have narrowed significantly.