The politics of pork

It is one of the limitations of the principle of ‘one-man-one-vote’ that it makes no allowance for the expression of intense preferences. Vote-trading can, in principle, be used to ameliorate this problem.

A person might, for example, agree to vote the way someone else wants in a local election about which they do not have strong views in return for that person then voting the way they want in a subsequent general election. In practice, the secret ballot makes such arrangements extremely difficult to enforce. In legislatures where voting is in public and the numbers involved are relatively small, vote-trading is however possible. In the United States, where party discipline is relatively weak, and where, according to public choice theorists (Weingest and Marshall 1988), Congressional committees serve to enforce such deals, vote-trading is, as political scientists have always recognized (Schattschn eider 1935), extremely common. The question public choice theorists want to ask is whether it increases efficiency and leads to better legislation? Because vote-trading allows individuals to express the intensity of their preferences and because it results in mutually beneficial exchange it might be concluded that it does (Buchanan and Tullock 1965). But it can also be shown that vote-trading facilitates one of the least attractive and most inefficient features of American politics, the pork barrel.

Pork barrel politics arise when a group of politicians agree to support an amendment to a piece of legislation specifically designed to benefit voters in the constituency of the person proposing the amendment in return for that representative’s subsequent support for amendments designed to benefit their own constituents. Such deals allow the politicians involved to demonstrate their ability to further the interest of their constituents. Vote-trading of this sort does however result in the imposition of negative external costs upon the constituents of politicians not involved in the deal and the passage of inefficient legislation.

Consider a simple situation in which there are just three legislators (1, 2 and 3) and three expenditure proposals (A, B and C) the fate of which are to be decided by simple majority voting. Table 4.1 shows by how much, on average, the constituents of each legislator will benefit if the proposal is approved. Notice that the benefits of proposals A and C are relatively concentrated in the constituencies of the first and third legislators respectively. Assume that each proposal costs £30 and that this cost is to be divided equally between the constituencies. Economic efficiency would, at a minimum, seem to require the approval of those proposals and only those proposals for which total benefits are greater than total costs. In this case the only proposal which meets this criterion is B. In the case of proposals A and C total benefits are less than £30.

With simple majority voting and no vote-trading, efficiency will be secured. Vote-maximizing legislators will vote for those proposals whose benefits for their constituents are greater than their £10 share of the total cost. All three will therefore vote for B. The second and third legislators will however vote against A and the first and second legislators will vote against C. But if vote-trading is possible, the first and third legislators will find it in their interests to come to a deal whereby the third legislator supports A in return for the first legislator’s support for C. Such a deal would be mutually beneficial. The first legislator will lose £4 from the passage of C but gain £10 from the approval of A. The third legislator will lose £6 from the passage of A but gain £7 from the approval of C. The loser in all this is the second legislator. The passage of A costs them £8 and that

	Table 4.1	Vote trading
Legislator		Expenditure proposal
	A	B	C
1	£20	£15	£6
2	£2	£16	£6
3	£4	£11	£17
Total	£26	£38	£29

of C £4. Notice that this negative externality is greater than the total gains of the first and third legislators.

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Source: Hay Colin, Lister Michael, Marsh David (eds.). The State: Theories and Issues. Palgrave,2005. — 336 p.. 2005

The politics of pork

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