Pork Barrel Politics

Conventional wisdom holds that legislators who bring “pork”—federal funds for local projects—back home to their districts are better able to fend off potential challengers. For more than four decades, however, the empirical support for this belief has been mixed. Some studies have found that securing federal spending has no electoral effects at best or can even cost incumbent legislators votes. In Pork Barrel Politics , Andrew H. Sidman offers a systematic explanation for how political polarizat