Replication Data for: Privileging one’s own? Voting patterns and politicized spending in India

Article abstract: How do politicians allocate public resources? Despite the extensive literature on distributive politics, we have limited micro-level evidence for why and under what circumstances politicians choose various allocation strategies. India's discretionary constituency development scheme (MPLADS) provides an excellent opportunity to study the spending choices of individual politicians. Drawing on an original dataset linking voting patterns across 227,507 villages in the 2009 general elections to MPLADS allocations 2009-2014, we find that politicians generally channel more projects and resources to villages that vote for them in higher numbers. We then leverage a natural experiment created by the delimitation (redistricting) of electoral boundaries in 2008 to provide causal evidence that spending choices are driven by short-term electoral incentives. Finally, we show that allocation patterns differ by the type of party that has brought a politician to power. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on heterogeneity in politicians' distributional choices.论文摘要：政客如何分配公共资源？尽管分配政治领域的研究已颇为丰富，但针对政客选择各类分配策略的动因与适用情境，学界仍缺乏充足的微观层面证据。印度自主裁量型选区发展计划（MPLADS）为研究个体政客的资金分配选择提供了绝佳契机。本研究依托一套原创数据集，将2009年印度大选227507个村庄的投票格局与2009-2014年的MPLADS拨款情况相关联，结果发现政客通常会将更多项目与资源投向为自身投出更多选票的村庄。随后我们借助2008年选举选区边界重划（delimitation，redistricting）形成的自然实验，为“资金分配选择受短期选举动机驱动”这一结论提供了因果性证据。最后我们证实，资源分配模式会因执政党派的不同而存在差异。本研究成果为日益壮大的政客分配选择异质性相关研究领域提供了新的学术贡献。