The Changing Structure of Federal Aid and the Politics of the Electoral Connection

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

Considerable effort has been spent investigating the political consequences of the federal aid system. Previous research, has sought to link the formation of grant-seeking coalitions to the electoral fortunes of incumbents. The theoretical explanation and subsequent empirical tests of these relationships have centered almost exclusively on national and congressional politics. Missing in these studies has been a persuasive account of how the federal aid system has altered politics across levels of government. It is the supposition of this research team that by embedding state and local officials in networks of dependent relationships, the growth and changing character of the federal aid system has altered the electoral fortunes of elected officials at all levels of government. The investigators contend that changes in federal aid policies, by remaking relationships among stakeholders in federal aid programs, have had a significant affect on the career trajectories of elected officeholders, at both the congressional and subnational levels. The goal of this investigation is to examine the impact of changes in the federal aid system on the electoral trajectories of office holders at both the congressional and subnational levels. The investigators want to understand who runs, for what offices, and with what outcomes. The goal is to understand electoral trajectories in metropolitan areas across electoral offices. including congressional districts, county executives, and mayors offices. The reason for this is straightforward and compelling. Metropolitan areas reflect organic patterns of social and economic interactions . These interactions give rise to spillovers and the incentives and disincentives for inter jurisdictional cooperation, and thus create the potential for linking the electoral paths available to aspiring politicians. To accomplish these goals, the investigators update and extend the data series on federal domestic aid programs and their subnational distribution that they initiated in 1989 under a grant from the National Science Foundation. This database has been used by a wide cross-section of social scientists, and the researchers have received numerous requests for contemporaneous data on the status of domestic aid program attributes and their subnational distribution. Current data on the flow of federal aid does not adequately reflect structural changes resulting from devolution in the relationship between the federal and subnational governments. Devolution of federal policy responsibilities to subnational governments creates the need for a different type of data on the flow of federal aid moneys to recipients and beneficiaries. This project closes this information deficiency and creates a database that will be used widely by other scholars interested in the topic.