Electoral Geography and the Distribution of Resources

• In Event: Legislators and Their Constituents

Abstract

How does electoral geography shape the allocation of resources? Members of Congress allocate billions of dollars to local governments. However, some municipalities make up an entire congressional district while others are divided across multiple districts. I argue that this impacts how members of Congress represent those places in the form of the resources they direct back to their districts. I hypothesize that when a city constitutes the majority of a congressional district, it receives significantly more federal funding than when it is a minority of multiple districts. I test this theory using city-level data on federal spending from 1967--2019 and a within-city research design. My results speak to debates about how policymakers target resources and have important implications for how practices such as gerrymandering impact representation in Congress.

Author

• Leah Rosenstiel, Vanderbilt University