Local pork-barrel politics in national pre-election dates: The case of Italy

Political representation in the national assemblies is geographic and elect ed representatives care about who gains and who loses in their electoral di stricts. Since legislators are re-election oriented, their chances of elect oral success are directly associated with the net benefits delivered to the ir constituents. In this perspective, geography is not only the basis for p olitical organisation and representation, but also the hallmark of distribu tive politics. In this context, it is likely that locally elected politicia ns and party leaders standing in national elections would tend to cooperate in pre-election dates. In this paper we argue that local administrators ha ve an incentive to manipulate local government outlays in connection with n ational election dates to enhance the re-election prospects of their nation al party leaders. In particular, given the matching character of national g rants with local investment spending, we expect that in pre-election dates local policy-makers would be induced to raise investment outlays beyond the ir standard growth rate. This would determine inefficient local public spen ding as a result of the geographically-based system of democratic represent ation. The case study under our investigation is the behaviour of Italian l ocal policy-makers in connection with national election dates.