CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Kovarek, Daniel |
|---|---|
| Title | Distributive Politics as Behavioral Localism: Local Ties as Heuristics for Public Goods Allocation and Bureaucratic Oversight |
| Summary | Recent literature on friends-and-neighbors voting focused on explaining citizens' motives behind disproportionally supporting local candidates. This dissertation advances the literature by studying whether voters use politicians' local ties to make inferences about receiving tangible benefits. This speaks to the growing body of scholarship positing a cue-based explanation of how descriptive localism informs the electorate. It is composed of three independent studies that leverage original data collected via survey experiments and observational data capturing bureaucrat-citizen interactions in Hungary. The first paper draws on an online survey experiment (N=2076) and tests whether pork barrel politics and clientelism are manifestations of behavioral localism using a vignette study. Respondents in the treatment and the control group were shown the same candidate profile of a fictive politician, differing only in their local roots. Results demonstrate that respondents who were told that the candidate was born and living in their hometown were more likely to believe that the politician will `bring home the bacon' as opposed to those confronted with a randomly selected Hungarian settlement as the candidate's birthplace and residence. To better understand how preferences regarding distributive linkages shape expectations about local candidates, a choice-based conjoint experiment was also fielded. Promises of pork delivery increased, whereas clientelistic exchanges decreased the likelihood of selecting a particular candidate profile (with programmatic linkages set as baseline). The second paper tests whether voters formulate expectations about politicians' future behavior concerning hiring decisions with respect to municipal and state jobs based on the local roots these candidates' possess. Using a nationally representative, probability sample (N=1000), the study utilizes vignettes to investigate whether respondents find it more likely that job-seekers who posses shared local roots with incumbents will be able to obtain jobs in the public sector. Furthermore, a conjoint demonstrates that respondents themselves are more willing to fire non-local employees, and they believe their decisions reflect the behavior of real-world top bureaucrats. The third paper shows how civil servants use incumbents' local ties as proxies for monitoring. The literature suggests bureaucrats shirk when political oversight is limited or inefficient. When civil servants engage in multitasking, elected office holders have neither the capacity, nor the incentives to monitor bureaucrat–citizen interactions. I argue that under such circumstances, public servants prioritize responding to local anomalies which are located in the immediate vicinity of politicians' domiciles. Using a novel dataset on geolocated problem reports (N=25,733), matched to mayors' addresses, I find that proximity to mayors' domiciles is associated with more prompt responses from authorities. Results suggest local politicians generate positive externalities for their neighbors, as bureaucrats put reports that are invisible to their principals on the back burner. Moreover, response speed is positively associated with incumbent mayors' re-election chances. The findings refine our understanding of voters' expectations about elected politicians' non-programmatic behavior, political oversight of bureaucrats, political business cycles and representation in civil service. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/kovarek_daniel.pdf |
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