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County Over Party: How Governors Prioritized Geography Not Particularism in the Distribution of Opportunity Zones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2021

David Glick Open the ORCID record for David Glick [Opens in a new window]  and
Maxwell Palmer Open the ORCID record for Maxwell Palmer [Opens in a new window]
David Glick*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Maxwell Palmer
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: dmglick@bu.edu
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Abstract

Allocating resources is a central function of government, and the distributive politics literature provides considerable evidence of leaders around the world directing resources to co-partisan voters and officials. In the United States, studies of ‘presidential particularism’ have recently demonstrated strategic targeting by the federal executive branch. This letter extends the inquiry to states using an unusually rich case in which all governors simultaneously faced decisions about allocating a constrained resource – tax advantaged status for economic development – from an exogenously generated list of geographic possibilities. This study tests whether governors rewarded their supporters' and allies' areas alongside two alternatives: (1) spreading the wealth by geographic subunits and (2) policy need. It finds no evidence of gubernatorial particularism. Instead, Republicans and Democratic governors prioritized allocating opportunity zones geographically and made efforts to designate at least one in each county. They were also responsive to policy need.

Keywords

distributive politicsparticularistic politicseconomic developmentgovernorsfederalismstate politics
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 1902 - 1910
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Supplementary material: Link

Glick and Palmer Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MY3GI1
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Glick and Palmer supplementary material

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