REPRESENTATION AND PUBLIC-POLICY - THE CONSEQUENCES OF SENATE APPORTIONMENT FOR THE GEOGRAPHIC-DISTRIBUTION OF FEDERAL-FUNDS

Political scientists have long believed that the formal arrangements o f representative institutions make a difference for public policy; in spite of this, they have largely neglected to investigate the policy e ffects of Senate apportionment. This paper tests the hypothesis that c oalition building in the Senate will produce distributions of federal funds to states reflecting the enhanced representation of small states in the Senate. Using Bickers and Stein's U.S. Domestic Assistance Pro grams Database, I find that, first, federal distributive programs are typically constructed so that a majority, frequently an overwhelming m ajority, of states benefit. Second using a pooled cross-sectional time -series design (N = 350), I examine the distributions of federal funds to states in different types of domestic assistance programs to deter mine if they bear the imprint of Senate apportionment. I find that ove rrepresented states tend to receive higher allocations of federal fund s per capita, most notably in programs characterized as nondiscretiona ry distributive.