Conclusion
A simple economic theory may provide at least a partial explanation for the ticket splitting pattern that has been observed at the federal level in the United States: where Republicans do better in races for the White House than in contests for Congressional seats. To the extent that Democratic legislators, because of their ideology, are more willing to forgo national policymaking for local benefit-seeking than their Republican counterparts, rational voters have an investment incentive to: (1) lean Democratic when it comes to casting ballots for an individual representative to Congress — thereby attempting to secure as large as possible a slice of the total government spending pie; and (2) lean Republican when it comes to races for the presidency — so as to limit the net losses imposed by the prisoner's dilemma game that local benefit-seeking by Congressional representatives entails.
The foregoing theory naturally depends on the validity of the assumption that Democratic legislators engage in greater local benefit-seeking than their Republican counterparts. By examining roll call attendance rates this paper provides some empirical support for such an assumption. To the extent that roll call votes concern national policymaking issues, Democratic legislators appear to be more willing than their Republican counterparts to forgo taking part in the resolution of such issues for the sake of narrower, local-benefit seeking activities such as casework and the pursuit of pork barrel.
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The author would like to thank Jim Buchanan, Morris Fiorina, Tom Gilligan, Doug Joines, John Lott, Sam Peltzman, Gordon Tullock, Mark Weinstein and seminar participants at Georgia State University, UCLA, University of Connecticut, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Rochester, and USC for helpful comments and suggestions. The USC School of Business has supplied research funding.
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Zupan, M.A. Local benefit-seeking and national policymaking: Democrats vs. Republicans in the legislature. Public Choice 68, 245–258 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00173831
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00173831