Party Discipline and Government Spending: Theory and
Evidence∗
Marta Curto-Grau†
Galina Zudenkova‡
Preliminary draft. Please do not cite.
Abstract
Political parties value highly the commitment of their members with their party line
as internal cohesion helps them build reputation. Excessive party discipline at the individual level is, however, electorally costly and, thus, in some instances legislators may
be reluctant to vote in agreement with their party. In this paper we examine theoretically and empirically the possibility that party leaders systematically use distributive
spending to reward discipline within their party. The empirical analysis is based on
U.S. data on the geographical distribution of discretionary spending from the federal
government to congressional districts and the level of party loyalty of legislators in the
House of Representatives. Using a panel data analysis with time and district fixedeffects, we find that an increase in loyalty in congressional roll-call voting translates
into larger discretionary spending. However, this effect is only statistically significant
in districts represented by members in the House majority.
Keywords: Party discipline; Majority party; Minority party; Party leadership; Porkbarrel spending.
JEL classification: D72, H41
∗
We are grateful to Lutz Brückner for research assistance. We also thank Ken Sheplse and James Snyder
for their comments and advice. An earlier - and very different - version of this paper circulated with the title
“Party Discipline in Congress”.
†
Research Center for Distributional Conflict and Globalization, University of Heidelberg, Bergheimer Str.
58, 69115 Heidelberg, Email: [email protected]
‡
Department of Economics, University of Mannheim, D-68131 Mannheim, Germany. E-mail address:
[email protected]. University of Mannheim
1
1
Introduction
In modern democracies, party discipline is defined as the ability of the leadership of a party
to control its members in the legislature. Such control is often difficult to achieve because
in the effort to serve their constituents, individual legislators may try to defect their party
line. Excessive loyalty with the party may have large negative consequences at the polls.
For this reason, to soften electoral punishment and foster discipline, party leaders may reward loyalty. Such rewards may include “favorable committee assignments and leadership
positions, campaign funds, district visits by party notables, federal projects targeted to a
member’s district, expedited treatment for a member’s favorite bills, and invitations to serve
as speaker pro tem” (Snyder and Groseclose (2000), p.194).
Applied studies in the political science literature have emphasized the political consequences of party discipline. Some of them examine the electoral punishment that too loyal
legislators suffer at the polls (e.g., Carson and Young (2010)). Others shown that party
influence affects legislators’ voting behavior (Heller and Mershon (2008); Krehbiel (2000);
McCarty and Rosenthal (2001); Rohde (1991); Snyder and Groseclose (2000)). For the U.S,
Barber and Godbout (2014) show that majority party leaders reward loyalty in roll call voting
through larger campaign contributions for the next election.
Further, a number of authors have produced formal models of party discipline. Some
researchers have elaborated on informational arguments, pointing out that strong party discipline informs voters about the future policy of a candidate who, once elected, cannot deviate
from the partys official platform (Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita (2004); Castanheira and
Crutzen (2010); Cox and McCubbins (1993); Snyder and Ting (2002)). In a similar vein,
Grossman and Helpman (2008) defined party discipline as a party’s ability to induce ex-post
adherence to a pre-announced position. In other words, the level of party discipline determines the "extent of commitment to party platforms."1 In some other studies, party discipline
has been modeled as the ability of the party leadership to control its members in the legislature such that they vote in line with the party’s ideological position (Colomer (2005); Eguia
(2011); Iaryczower (2008); McGillivray (1997); Patty (2008); Volden and Bergman (2006)).
In these models, the party leaders’ objective is to discipline party members who might have
different ideological preferences. Diermeier and Feddersen (1998a,b) provided an institutional
explanation for cohesive voting of legislators in parliamentary systems. They showed that the
vote-of-condence procedure common in parliamentary democracies creates an incentive for
cohesion in voting. In any case, party discipline is a valuable asset to party leaders because
1
Grossman and Helpman (2008), p.330.
2
it acts as a signal of cohesion which, in turn, helps building a “political brand” (Cox and
McCubbins (1993).
While a number of studies have identified and formally analyzed party discipline, there
remains a great deal of uncertainty as to how discipline affects actual policy outcomes2 .
The present paper contributes to this line of research. In particular, we seek to explain
theoretically and empirically the effects of party discipline on the geographic allocation of
discretionary spending3 , an issue largely disregarded by existing studies on distributive politics.
The relationship between party discipline and discretionary spending is not a priori clearcut. Primo and Snyder (2010) suggest that party strength may be a “possible solution to the
problem of inefficient universalism” (p. 354), thus predicting lower federal spending under
a strong party system. Their main argument is that “when parties have strong electoral
organizations [i.e. party strenght outside the legislature], legislators have less incentives to
engage in ’credit-claiming’ activities, such as constituency service and particularistic spending, because the party organization will do much of the work in helping them run for office.”
Although party discipline may reduce wasteful spending, Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita
(2006) have noted a fact that is at odds with this hypothesis: since the early 1990s, the U.S.
has experienced an increase both in party cohesion in congressional roll-call voting and porkbarrel spending (measured as congressional earmarks in appropriation bills). This pattern
is more consistent with the idea of pork as a reward for loyalty. Pearson (2008) suggests
that this may be indeed the case: “When party leaders in both chambers finalize the details
of major legislation, they have opportunities to reward loyalty. The increasing number of
earmarks added in conference committee or during budget summit negotiation may provide
limited opportunities to reward loyalty that are worth further investigation” (p. 113)4 .
The U.S. offers a good setting to test the hypothesis that party leaders favor loyal members
2
3
4
An exception is Grossman and Helpman (2008) who studied how differences in party discipline affect
local public goods spending. In their setting, however, party discipline is modeled as an exogenously
given institutional variable -an "extent of commitment to party platforms." They found a non-monotonic
relationship between this institutional variable and pork-barrel spending. The present paper in turn
adopts a standard denition of party discipline as the ability of party leaders to induce members to
support the party line. Moreover, it endogenizes party discipline by modeling explicitly the party
leaders problem.
The term discretionary spending refers to non programmatic spending that has a partisan bias and is
targeted to certain constituencies. Henceforth we use interchangeably the terms discretionary spending
and pork barrel -an equivalent term commonly used in studies on the U.S.
Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence in the media as, for instance, the claim of a journalist writing about the need to eliminate a ban on earmarks adopted in 2010:
"It’s
time to bring back the earmark, and to treat it for what it is:
a reward for party
loyalty.”
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/09/22/How-Earmarks-Can-Get-Do-NothingCongress-Do-Something
3
through large amounts of federal spending. In this country party discipline is relatively
lower than in other countries and shows considerable variation over time. To conduct our
analysis, we use data on discretionary spending from the federal government to congressional
districts and party discipline in the U.S. House of Representatives over the period 1984-2010.
Regarding our measure of party discipline, we focus our analysis on party loyalty in policy
voting, that is, the behavior of parties (and their members) within the legislative process (in
contrast to Primo and Snyder (2010), probably the closest paper to ours). We measure this
type of discipline using the “party unity scores” published yearly by Congressional Quarterly.
These scores are based on roll call votes in which a majority of Democrats opposed a majority
of Republicans; unity scores are measured as the percentage of such votes in which a member
of the Congress voted in line with her party.
The estimated effects are obtained using ordinary least squares with time and district
fixed effects in order to reduce the potential bias generated by omitted variables. The results
indicate that a 10 unit increase in the level of party discipline increases the federal spending
a congressional district receives by approximately 6% (for an average district in our sample
this represents $80 per capita). Most importantly, this effect is only statistically significant
for districts represented by a member of the House majority, which points to an exclusive
advantage of the majority party to reward the loyalty of their members. In our period under
analysis, the House of Representatives has been under the control of both Republicans and
Democrats, ruling out the possibility that such advantage is inherent in only one party.
Lastly, we also test for differential effects in marginal versus safe districts but we do not
observe a statistically significant pattern.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 outlines the institutional background of the paper (i.e. the role of party leaders and the evolution of party discipline in
the U.S. Congress) and a set of theoretical considerations that are relevant for our analysis. Section 3, presents the empirical analysis and discusses our findings. Finally, Section 4
concludes.
2
Institutional and theoretical considerations
Party discipline and the role of party leaders in the U.S. Congress
In the U.S., party organizational strength experienced a sharp decline by the mid-1970s
(Mayhew (1986)). This fact took place in parallel with an increase in legislative loyalty in
the Congress (i.e. it became more common for legislators to vote with their party line).
As previous literature has noted, party discipline is a difficult concept to measure quantita4
tively (see e.g. Snyder and Groseclose (2000); Krehbiel (2000)). However, it seems reasonable
to believe that party discipline becomes especially visible when members of the Congress have
to vote on an issue in which a majority of one party votes against a majority of the other
party - a concept known as party unity votes5 . A common measure of the level of party
discipline of an individual legislator on a given year is, thus, the percentage of party unity
votes on which a member voted “yea” or “nay” in agreement with his or her party. As shown
in Figure 1, this score was on average around 60% by the early 70s but it raised significantly
during the following decades and nowadays it amounts to 80%-90%.
5
Snyder and Groseclose (2000) estimate the extent to which party influences roll-call votes in the U.S.
Congress for the period 1871-1998 and argue that lopsided roll calls do not need to be better predictors
of party influence. However, they also admit that this finding may be “a statistical artifact”.
5
Panel A: U.S. House of Representatives
60
Average Unity Scores
70
80
90
100
Figure 1: Party discipline and party control in the U.S. Congress
1970
1996
2007
2011
2001 2004 2007
2011
Fiscal Year
50
Average Unity Scores
60
70
80
90
100
Panel B: U.S. Senate
1970
1982
1987
1996
Fiscal Year
Democratic Majority
Democratic Score
Republican Majority
Republican Score
Source: Congressional Quarterly, Annual Report, January 2011
In the U.S., party leaders play an important role within the legislative process. Once
elected, they can assist (and favor) their party members in several ways. Party leaders,
however, have not always had such a relevant role. In fact, it was not until the end of the
19th century that the congressmen of each political party organized and assembled separately
to elect some members who would represent them, and until the 20th century the posts of
6
majority and minority leaders were not official political positions6 . In the 1970s the House
of Representatives undertook a series of reforms that partitioned the postwar period into a
“Weak Party Era” (prior to the reforms) and a “Strong Party Era” (from the mid-70s until
nowadays). Hall and Shepsle (2013) examine how this changes affected the value of seniority
in the U.S. House. Their study is based on the fact that the rule changes undertaken by the
Democratic and Republican party during the 70s increased the power of the party leadership
at the expense of senior members. The findings of their study suggest that the electoral
rewards to seniority are higher during the Weak Party Era, “when senior members are able
to convert their longevity into more value for their constituents.” The reason behind this
finding is that during this era the power was in the hands of committee chairs (who obtained
such positions through seniority) but after the 70s the power shifted towards party leaders.
As previously discussed, nowadays party leaders aim at reaching the highest possible
degree of unified party action and to achieve this goal they may reward loyal members during
the legislative process. In addition, they may want to compensate for the severe electoral
consequences that party loyalty has for incumbents running for re-election. An empirical
analysis for the U.S. shows that voters punish elected representatives not for their ideological
extremism but for voting too often with their party on salient issues that divide Republicans
and Democrats (Carson and Young (2010)).
While Carson and Young (2010) suggest that the reason why legislators continue supporting their party line most of the time -despite its electoral consequences- is “a combination
of personal conviction and support for the collective interests of their parties,” it seems also
plausible to think that loyal legislators receive monetary benefits (e.g. campaign contributions or pork-barrel spending) in exchange for discipline. Furthermore, Pearson (2005) shows
that there are other “legislative” resources to benefit loyal party members. More specifically,
she analyzes how party discipline affects which members’ bills, amendments, resolutions, and
suspensions were considered for the floor debate in the House of Representatives during the
years 1982-2002.
Theoretical arguments and hypothesis
Extant studies on the political determinants of pork-barrel spending can be divided broadly
in three main groups. One of them emphasizes the bias in the allocation of funds towards
districts represented by senior representatives (e.g.DeBacker (2011); Bernhardt (2004))7 . Another set of studies examine whether government spending is targeted to ‘swing’ or ‘core’
6
7
https://www.senate.gov/general/common/generic/officer_responsiblities.htm
The intuition behind these papers is that, over the years in office, senior legislators have established
personal relationships that help them attract funds.
7
constituencies8 . A third group focuses on how congressional majorities or the alignment with
the President’s party may determine the distribution of public spending (e.g., Levitt and
Snyder (1995); Berry (2010); Dynes and Huber (2015)). A fourth group analyzes whether
politically aligned districts are disproportionately favored by upper-level governments in the
distribution of discretionary grants (e.g. Arulampalam and Dutta (2009); Brollo and Nannicini (2012)). In any case, as discussed in the Introduction, very little is known about the
potential effect of party discipline on the geographic allocation of federal funds.
We believe that the paper that is closest to ours is Primo and Snyder (2010), which
examines the relationship between party strength and federal spending in the U.S. Their
study pays special attention to “party organizational strength” (i.e. strength outside the
legislature), but they also examine briefly the influence of “legislative party strength” (i.e.
discipline inside the legislature) on the distribution of federal spending. We depart from their
study in several ways. First, in their analysis of the role of “legislative party strength”, they
limit their time frame to the 1950s and 1960s given that they rely on a measure of party
discipline only available for that time frame. As explained before, the role of party leaders
in the Congress has changed greatly after the 1970s and, thus, in our setting party leaders
have the capacity to reward loyalty. Second, as a measure of legislative discipline they use an
index constructed by Zeller (1954), who using a measure of party cohesion in the legislature
classified U.S. states into states with strong or weak parties. Therefore, party discipline is
measured as a binary variable that does not change over time within states. In contrast, to
this approach we use a measure (party unity scores) that varies over time for each legislator.
Third, they focus their analysis on total federal spending to states, while we examine the
distribution of discretionary spending that can be more easily targeted to a particular district
and is more susceptible to manipulation.
Regardless of whether party leaders use discretionary spending to reward loyalty or they
use it to offset electoral defeats, our hypothesis is that, holding other things equal, an increase
in the level of party discipline should translate into an increase in pork-barrel spending to a
district.
Another feature that is noteworthy in this context is the distinction between the majority
and minority parties. Previous research (e.g. Albouy (2013); Dynes and Huber (2015);
Levitt and Snyder (1995)) finds that members of the majority party in the U.S. House
garner additional federal spending in their districts suggesting that the majority party has
an advantage in terms of proposal, or agenda-setting power. Therefore, although both the
8
See, e.g.,Lindbeck and Weibull (1987); Dixit and Londregan (1996); Cox and McCubbins (1986). For a
summary of the mixed evidence found by this strand of literature see Golden and Min (2013).
8
majority and minority leaders may value equally the loyalty of their party members, it is likely
that the minority leader lacks the “legislative resources” to reward discipline. Moreover, it
is likely that the majority leader is reluctant to send large amounts of pork to opposition
districts given that without party alignment it may be difficult to claim credit for that. All
in all, our hypothesis is that the returns to party discipline should be considerably larger for
majority party members.
Despite the above hypothesis, it should be noted that the presence of such bias does
not prevent minority states from attracting pork-barrel spending provided that there exists
a “partisan blame avoidance”. In other words, “to inoculate itself against minority party
criticism, the majority concedes a share of distributive projects to the minority and thereby
renders partisan distinctions inconsequential in the awarding of earmarks.” (Balla and Sigelman (2002), p.518)
3
Empirical application
In this Section, we provide empirical evidence on the relationship between party discipline in
the U.S. House of Representatives and the geographic distribution of pork-barrel spending
among congressional districts over the years 1984-2010. Provided that representatives in
the U.S. Congress show a relatively large degree of autonomy, we believe that this country
provides a good setting for testing the hypothesis that party discipline is rewarded through
distributive spending. Moreover, the levels of loyalty within the legislature have changed
remarkably over time within congressional districts. This allows us to use a panel data
analysis with district fixed-effects.
3.1
Data
Pork-barrel spending
To focus our analysis on the distribution of pork-barrel spending we follow previous work
on the U.S. that classifies spending programs into “high variance” and “low variance” programs based on the coefficient of variation of each program (DeBacker (2011); Levitt and
Snyder (1995); Dynes and Huber (2015)). Information on federal spending is obtained from
the Federal Assistance Award Data System (FAADS), which has data on federal transfers
disaggregated at the congressional district level .
Although FAADS data represent a smaller percentage of the federal budget than data
from the Consolidated Federal Funds Report -an alternative source-, the former is preferred
9
as it is more disaggregated and identifies with more precision the recipient of the funds.
The coefficient of variation used to capture discretionary spending is the variance in mean
awards by each program across congressional districts. High-variance spending is commonly
associated with discretionary spending as it is usually not formula-based and it tends to
fund smaller programs that are more susceptible of targeting. In our paper, we use the same
FAADS data than Dynes and Huber (2015)9 and, thus, we take the same rule of thumb
to select high-variance spending10 . This is arguably not a perfect measure of pork-barrel
spending, however, “pure” distributive spending (i.e. earmarks in appropriation bills) is only
available at the state level and an aggregation of party discipline at such level would dismiss
important information given the large divergences within states.
It is important to note that the federal budget of a certain fiscal year (FY) is approved
during the previous year. This means, for instance, that pork-barrel expenditures of FY1993
were passed in 1992 by legislators elected in the 1990 election. In our sample, congressional
districts receive on average $1151 per capita of discretionary spending.
Party discipline
With regards to our main explanatory variable of interest, in our analysis we use a measure
of party loyalty in policy voting. This measure is the “party unity score” of each legislators
in a given year (i.e. the percentage of party unity votes on which a member voted “yea” or
“nay” in agreement with his or her party). Data on party unity scores are collected from
Congressional Quarterly Allmanac. In our sample, this is a score has a minimum of 9.36
and a mean of 87.25. Table1 below summarizes the descriptive statistics for the variables
described in this section.
Additional control variables
Besides party discipline, our explanatory variables also include additional political and economic factors that vary over time within a congressional district. The political controls are
based on previous literature on distributive spending and include a large set of variables.
Three of these variables help identifying whether a legislator holds a certain leadership position that would help her attracting larger funds: Committee Chair, Member of Appropriations
9
10
Replication files are kindly made available online in http://adamdynes.com/research.html
The threshold they use to split spending into high and low variation is 1 (which is a natural break at
the lower end of a histogram of the coefficients of variation). Therefore, programs with a coefficient of
variation (CV) above this threshold are considered to be pork-barrel spending. The online appendix of
their paper contains detailed information on how the data is collected and how the CV is computed.
10
Committee, Member of Ways and Means Committee, and Member of Majority-Party leadership are binary variables that equal to one if the representative is a chair of a committee, a
member of the Appropriations committee, a member of the Ways and Means committee, or
a member of the Majority-Party leadership, respectively.
Also, we add two variables to account for the possibility that members with a certain
partisanship have an agenda-setting advantage that helps secure funding: this would be
the case of members belonging to the President’s party (Member of President’s Party) or
members of the House majority (Member of House Majority), which does not necessarily
coincide with the President’s party. In addition, to account for possible “taste effects”,
we include in our regressions a binary variable that equals one if a member is republican
(Republican)11 .
The years in office are also an important determinant of the distribution of funds as more
senior members are meant to be in a better position to attract grants; thus, we include a
dummy variable that indicates wether a representative is in his first term (Freshman), and a
variable measuring the number of years an incumbent has been in office (Seniority).
The literature on pork-barrel politics also suggests that electoral competition in a district
influences the allocation of government spending. In line with this argument, we add a continuous variable for the district’s 2 party vote margin for the winning presidential candidate
(Winning Presidential Candidate’s Margin) and a dummy indicating whether a representative’s last election margin was less than 5% (Close Election). Finally, we include a binary
variable equal to one if a representative is a ranking minority member of a committee (Ranking Minority).
Even if the spending we are analyzing is to a large extent discretionary, economic variables
may also influence its geographical allocation across districts. Hence, our econometric specifications include a list of socioeconomic variables that capture changes in spending needs.
Such variables are unemployment rate, population density, population size, mean household
income, the percentage of population that is black, sixty five or over. These variables are
obtained from the Decennial Census12 , which is the only source with data at the congressional district level. As the Decennial Census is not published yearly we use the censuses
from 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 and interpolate the data to obtain yearly observations.
11
12
Republican legislators tend to secure less grants for their districts.
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html
11
Table 1: Descriptive statistics
Variable
High-Variation Spending per capita
Party unity
Member of President’s Party
Committee chair
Member of Majority-Party leadership
Member of Appropriations Committee
Member of Ways & Means Committee
Republican
Freshman
Close election (=1 if vote margin < 5%)
Winning presidential candidate’s margin in district
Member of House Majority
Ranking minority member on committee
Population≥ 65
Black population
Unemployment rate
Population density
Total population
3.2
Mean
1151.77
87.25
0.47
0.05
0.01
0.14
0.09
0.46
0.13
0.06
0.24
0.55
0.05
0.13
0.11
0.06
2890.99
578704
St.Dev.
2220.68
12.27
0.49
0.22
0.10
0.35
0.28
0.49
0.34
0.24
0.17
0.49
0.22
0.04
0.15
0.04
8333.13
84199
Min
10.61
9.36
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.02
0.00
0.01
0.533
302173
Max
32993.46
100
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0.92
1
1
0.43
0.92
1
86760.57
1062153
Econometric model
We estimate the relationship between party discipline and pork-barrel spending using a panel
data model with district and time fixed-effects as expressed in the following equation:
yit = βP arty U nityit + γP oliticsit + θSocioeconit + µi + δt + uit
(1)
where yit is High-Variance spending per capita in district i at fiscal year t, in 2010 dollars,
adjusted using consumer price index; P oliticsit and Socioeconit are the set of political and
socioeconomic controls, respectively (see previous subsection for details); δt and µi represent
year and district effects, respectively; uit is an error term (which is clustered at the congressional district level to provide consistent estimates); P artyU nityit is the level of party
discipline.
According to our hipothesis, β is expected to be positive given that party discipline is
valued positively by party leaders who afterwards reward it.
12
3.3
Results
Table 2 below shows the OLS estimates obtained from regressing Equation (1) with several
modifications: the regression in column (2) includes an interaction between the level of party
discipline and a binary variable for close elections; column (3) includes a linear time trend
to test whether the effect of party discipline varies along the years or remains constant for
the whole period under analysis.
Despite the lack of statistical significance of our main explanatory variable of interest,
the results in Table 2 show that there are two political variables that are important determinants of the distribution of discretionary spending across districts: whether a legislator’s
last election was close and whether the legislator is a member of the majority party. In both
cases, the coefficients are positive, in line with the findings of previous studies.
13
Table 2: Party discipline and discretionary spending to U.S. congressional districts, 1984-2010
Party unity
(1)
(2)
(3)
0.124
(1.384)
-0.367
(1.431)
-1.521
(1.847)
Party unity x Close election
4.347
(2.849)
Party unity x Trend
Close election
0.149
(0.169)
135.859
(37.790)***
-235.845
(224.493)
137.305
(37.835)***
52.695
(47.587)
53.609
(47.583)
50.889
(47.560)
113.410
(29.244)***
115.042
(29.353)***
109.526
(29.682)***
2.297
(1.702)
2.298
(1.702)
2.250
(1.712)
Majority leadership
-290.448
(269.632)
-290.001
(269.336)
-294.295
(269.670)
Committee chair
-40.948
(59.987)
-41.561
(59.946)
-41.064
(60.076)
94.768
93.529
94.873
(68.568)
(68.556)
(68.647)
Appropriations Committee
106.632
(65.088)
105.710
(65.310)
104.820
(65.257)
Ways & Means Committee
-43.673
(95.989)
-44.374
(95.999)
-44.889
(96.113)
-27.640
(54.517)
-25.975
(27.941)
11,086.466
-29.779
(54.688)
-27.397
(27.829)
11,128.726
-31.910
(54.802)
-26.701
(27.913)
10,536.702
(2,380.561)***
10,359
0.153
1,290
1,564
(2,381.417)***
10,359
0.153
1,290
1,564
(2,317.300)***
10,359
0.153
1,290
1,564
President’s party
Majority party
Margin at presidential elections
Ranking minority member on
committee
Republican
First term
Constant
Observations
R-squared
Mean of outcome in sample
# Unique districts
Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses, ***p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. SE clustered by
congressional district. Year dummies in all equations. Dependent variable =High-Variance Spending
per capita. Additional socioeconomic controls included are population, unemployment rate, percentage
of population over 65, percentage of black population, median household income, and population
density.
14
Given that the minority party may not have access to resources to reward party discipline,
as explained in a previous section, we estimate Equation (1) for two different sub-samples:
districts represented by a legislator in the majority party (Panel A) and districts represented
by minority legislators (Panel B). The results in Column 1 show that the effect of party
discipline on government spending is statistically significant only when the representative is
in the House majority. In this case, a 10 unit increase in the level of party discipline increases
the federal spending a congressional district receives by 80 dollars per capita. This represents
a 6% increase for the average distict.
Columns (2) and (4) replace the variable Party unity for a binary variable (Disciplined
member) that equals to one if the level of Party Unity of a legislator if above the average.
In this case, according to the results in column (2), disciplined members receive on average
11% more pork per capita than non-disciplined members.
15
Table 3: Party discipline and discretionary spending. Majority versus minority districts.
(1)
(2)
Panel A. Majority party districts
Party unity
8.035
(4.008)**
(4)
Panel B. Minority party districts
1.630
(2.040)
Disciplined member
Close election
(3)
161.776
(71.661)**
-44.562
(36.390)
205.504
(75.092)***
202.455
(74.395)***
133.874
(46.888)***
135.370
(46.646)***
-84.792
(128.866)
-80.897
(128.622)
250.370
(230.389)
313.028
(239.335)
2.771
(2.617)
3.167
(2.655)
-4.367
(2.942)
-4.291
(2.934)
-142.231
(52.600)***
-131.905
(49.695)***
86.746
(105.731)
66.646
(107.938)
Committee chair
-102.235
(69.494)
-101.782
(69.569)
-32.926
(180.906)
-37.082
(176.762)
Appropriations Committee
267.863
(186.968)
260.726
(183.955)
40.416
(67.217)
32.672
(66.550)
Ways & Means Committee
-105.028
(149.277)
-101.578
(148.706)
102.267
(147.375)
101.899
(147.335)
Republican
-287.371
(156.470)*
15.528
(46.873)
9,550.859
-285.764
(156.831)*
15.147
(46.846)
10,161.323
50.502
(230.855)
-10.630
(36.870)
14,618.333
36.337
(237.837)
-11.546
(36.698)
14,788.879
(2,224.847)***
5,791
0.138
1,297
(2,229.694)***
5,791
0.139
1,297
(5,704.871)**
4,568
0.146
1,093
(5,734.740)**
4,568
0.146
1,093
President’s party
Margin at presidential elections
Majority leadership
First term
Constant
Observations
R-squared
# Unique districts
Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses, ***p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. SE clustered by congressional district. Year
dummies in all equations. Dependent variable =High-Variance Spending per capita. Additional socioeconomic controls included
are population, unemployment rate, percentage of population over 65, percentage of black population, median household income,
and population density.
Lastly, in Table 4 we test the relationship between party discipline and non-discretionary
spending. In this case the dependent variable is low-variance spending and, as expected, the
coefficients of Party Unity and Disciplined Member are not statistically significant given that
this type of spending is much less susceptible to political manipulation.
16
Table 4: Party discipline and non-discretionary spending to U.S. congressional districts,
1984-2010
(1)
(2)
Panel A. Majority party districts
Party unity
-1.917
(1.516)
(4)
Panel B. Minority party districts
-3.917
(3.974)
Disciplined member
Close election
(3)
-33.189
(23.100)
-34.054
(67.269)
-14.191
(30.073)
-13.433
(29.954)
-61.950
(30.629)**
-61.221
(30.210)**
-1,678.148
(65.554)***
-1,678.633
(65.589)***
1,421.679
(223.426)***
1,516.834
(236.534)***
Margin at presidential elections
-0.991
(1.278)
-1.089
(1.280)
-1.369
(1.307)
-1.412
(1.306)
Majority leadership
-5.662
(24.010)
-9.120
(22.656)
65.687
(57.281)
70.552
(58.318)
Committee chair
9.568
(35.922)
9.279
(35.689)
-29.065
(59.204)
-17.609
(58.051)
Appropriations Committee
-11.761
(36.695)
-10.970
(36.964)
-67.623
(50.110)
-59.005
(46.342)
Ways & Means Committee
-45.932
(69.459)
-46.802
(69.644)
-14.137
(45.317)
-13.370
(44.411)
-1,059.762
(64.231)***
-32.320
(21.369)
31,620.396
-1,060.693
(64.226)***
-32.589
(21.388)
31,483.115
1,588.226
(294.898)***
-73.347
(38.744)*
25,312.192
1,452.947
(287.020)***
-73.530
(39.281)*
25,126.390
(1,510.283)***
5,791
0.598
1,297
(1,512.073)***
5,791
0.598
1,297
(1,339.998)***
4,568
0.677
1,093
(1,323.800)***
4,568
0.677
1,093
President’s party
Republican
First term
Constant
Observations
R-squared
# Unique districts
Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses, ***p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. SE clustered by congressional district. Year
dummies in all equations. Dependent variable=Low-Variance Spending per capita. Additional socioeconomic controls included
are population, unemployment rate, percentage of population over 65, percentage of black population, median household income,
and population density.
17
4
Conclusions
This paper analyzes the relationship between party discipline in the Congress and the geographic allocation of pork-barrel spending across districts. The role of party discipline in the
allocation of pork has been largely omitted in the existing literature on distributive politics.
However, there are reasons to believe that party leaders may wish to reward loyalty through
targeted spending.
Strong party discipline within the legislature is highly valued by party leaders given that it
increases the reputation of the party. Loyalty has been proven to be rewarded with campaign
contributions (Barber and Godbout, 2014) and consideration of bills for the floor debate in
the House of Representatives (Pearson, 2005). Moreover, excessive party loyalty has been
found to have negative electoral consequences and to offset such situation party leaders may
compensate legislators with monetary benefits (such as pork-barrel for their districts).
Our hypothesis is tested empirically using congressional district level data on federal
spending and party discipline in policy voting in the U.S. House of Representatives over
the period 1984-2010. The U.S. is especially suitable for examining this issue given that
its congressmen exhibit a relatively large degree of autonomy. Moreover, the levels of party
discipline have varied considerably from the 1970s, when party organizational strength (i.e
party discipline outside the legislature) collapsed but party discipline within the legislature
started to increase sharply. As for the measure of party discipline used in this study, we
rely on the so-called “party unity scores”, i.e. the percentage of votes in which a member of
Congress votes in agreement with his or her party on roll call votes where the majority of
one party opposes the majority of the other.
The results using a panel data analysis with district fixed-effects reveal a positive relationship between party discipline and discretionary spending per capita. These effects are only
statistically significant for districts represented by members in the House majority, whose
party leader is likely to enjoy a relative legislative advantage to distribute expenditures.
Moreover, no effect is found when analysing non-discretionary spending.
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