1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457701703321

Autore

Evans Diana <1947->

Titolo

Greasing the wheels : using pork barrel projects to build majority coalitions in Congress / / Diana Evans [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2004

ISBN

1-107-16155-X

1-280-54055-9

0-511-21549-5

0-511-21728-5

0-511-21191-0

0-511-31587-2

0-511-61714-3

0-511-21368-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 267 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

328.73/0775

Soggetti

Coalitions

United States Politics and government

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-258) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Pork barrel politics and general interest legislation -- Who calls the shots? The allocation of pork barrel projects -- Highway demonstration projects and voting on the federal highway program -- Presidential bargaining with congress: the NAFTA bazaar -- Pork barreling in the Senate: do both parties do it?

Sommario/riassunto

Pork barrel projects would surely rank near the top of most observers' lists of Congress's most widely despised products. Yet, political leaders in Congress and the President often trade pork for votes to pass legislation that serves broad national purposes, giving members of Congress pork barrel projects in return for their votes on general interest legislation. It is a practice that succeeds at a cost, but it is a cost that many political leaders are willing to pay in order to enact the broader public policies that they favor. There is an irony in this: pork barrel benefits, the most reviled of Congress's legislative products, are used by policy coalition leaders to produce the type of policy that is



most admired - general interest legislation. This book makes the case that buying votes with pork is one way in which Congress solves its well-known collective action problem.