Replication Data for: I Don’t Like It Unless It’s for Me: Voters’ Perceptions of Pork-Barrel Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

The effective and fair distribution of public resources is seen as one of the key elements of a well-functioning democracy. In the real world, however, it turns out that resources are often allocated neither effectively nor equitably, and that the allocation of public finances serves as a tool for securing votes and re-election. Despite compelling evidence for pork-barrel patterns in distributive politics, little is known about voters’ perceptions of this inherently unfair situation. Existing findings are not only limited but also contradictory – voters perceive such a strategy both positively and negatively – while data have been gathered solely in Western countries with a long democratic tradition. We aim to contribute to these findings by identifying patterns present in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), for which a higher degree of clientelism and corruption is characteristic. Thus, we conducted two survey experiments – in Slovakia and the Czech Republic – both involving a representative sample of each country’s population. We manipulated two main factors – (1) fairness of the distribution and (2) profit for the respondent’s country – in order to study their influence on support for a decision-maker responsible for the distribution. Based on the findings, we conclude that once voters realise their own profit from pork-barrel politics, they tend to be less critical of unfair distributions of resources.

公共资源的有效且公平分配，被视为良序运行的民主制度的核心要素之一。然而在现实世界中，资源分配往往既未实现有效配置也未达成公平分配，且公共财政分配常被用作争取选票与连任的工具。尽管分配政治中存在大量关于政治分肥（pork-barrel）模式的有力证据，但学界对选民对于这种本质上不公的现状的认知仍知之甚少。现有研究结论不仅范围有限，且相互矛盾——选民对这类策略的认知兼具正负两面——而相关数据仅来自拥有悠久民主传统的西方国家。
本研究旨在通过解析中东欧（Central and Eastern Europe, CEE）地区的相关模式来填补这一研究空白，该地区的典型特征为庇护主义与腐败程度更高。为此，我们分别在斯洛伐克与捷克共和国开展了两项调查实验，两项实验均采用对应国家的人口代表性样本。我们设置了两项核心操纵变量：一是分配的公平性，二是受访者所在国家的获益情况，以此探究二者对分配决策者支持率的影响。基于实验结果，本研究得出结论：当选民意识到自身可从政治分肥政治中获益时，往往会降低对资源不公平分配的批判态度。