The Changing Structure of Federal Aid and the Politics of the Electoral Connection

已经花费了相当大的努力来调查联邦援助系统的政治后果。之前的研究试图将寻求赠款联盟的形成与现任议员的选举命运联系起来。对这些关系的理论解释和随后的实证检验几乎完全集中在国家和国会政治上。这些研究缺少一个有说服力的描述，说明联邦援助系统如何改变了各级政府的政治。这个研究团队的假设是，通过将州和地方官员嵌入依赖关系网络中，联邦援助系统的增长和特征变化改变了各级政府民选官员的选举命运。调查人员认为，联邦援助政策的变化，通过重塑联邦援助计划中利益相关者之间的关系，对当选官员在国会和国家以下各级的职业轨迹产生了重大影响。这项调查的目标是检查联邦援助系统的变化对国会和国家以下各级公职人员的选举轨迹的影响。调查人员想要了解谁在竞选，为什么办公室竞选，以及结果如何。其目标是通过选举办公室了解大都市地区的选举轨迹。包括国会选区、县行政长官和市长办公室。这样做的原因是直截了当和令人信服的。大都市区反映了社会和经济互动的有机模式。这些相互作用产生了溢出效应以及对司法管辖区间合作的激励和抑制，从而创造了将有抱负的政治家可用的选举途径联系起来的可能性。为了实现这些目标，调查人员更新和扩展了他们在1989年根据国家科学基金会的拨款发起的联邦国内援助计划及其国家以下地区分布的数据系列。社会科学家广泛使用了这个数据库，研究人员收到了许多关于国内援助方案属性及其在国家以下地区分布状况的同期数据的请求。目前关于联邦援助流动的数据没有充分反映联邦政府和国家以下各级政府之间的关系因权力下放而产生的结构性变化。将联邦政策责任下放给国家以下各级政府，就需要一种关于联邦援助资金流向受助人和受益人的不同类型的数据。该项目弥补了这一信息不足，并创建了一个数据库，将被其他对该主题感兴趣的学者广泛使用。

Considerable effort has been spent investigating the political consequences of the federal aid system. Previous research, has sought to link the formation of grant-seeking coalitions to the electoral fortunes of incumbents. The theoretical explanation and subsequent empirical tests of these relationships have centered almost exclusively on national and congressional politics. Missing in these studies has been a persuasive account of how the federal aid system has altered politics across levels of government. It is the supposition of this research team that by embedding state and local officials in networks of dependent relationships, the growth and changing character of the federal aid system has altered the electoral fortunes of elected officials at all levels of government. The investigators contend that changes in federal aid policies, by remaking relationships among stakeholders in federal aid programs, have had a significant affect on the career trajectories of elected officeholders, at both the congressional and subnational levels.The goal of this investigation is to examine the impact of changes in the federal aid system on the electoral trajectories of office holders at both the congressional and subnational levels. The investigators want to understand who runs, for what offices, and with what outcomes. The goal is to understand electoral trajectories in metropolitan areas across electoral offices. including congressional districts, county executives, and mayors offices. The reason for this is straightforward and compelling. Metropolitan areas reflect organic patterns of social and economic interactions . These interactions give rise to spillovers and the incentives and disincentives for inter jurisdictional cooperation, and thus create the potential for linking the electoral paths available to aspiring politicians.To accomplish these goals, the investigators update and extend the data series on federal domestic aid programs and their subnational distribution that they initiated in 1989 under a grant from the National Science Foundation. This database has been used by a wide cross-section of social scientists, and the researchers have received numerous requests for contemporaneous data on the status of domestic aid program attributes and their subnational distribution. Current data on the flow of federal aid does not adequately reflect structural changes resulting from devolution in the relationship between the federal and subnational governments. Devolution of federal policy responsibilities to subnational governments creates the need for a different type of data on the flow of federal aid moneys to recipients and beneficiaries. This project closes this information deficiency and creates a database that will be used widely by other scholars interested in the topic.