Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(4): 499-528 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.4.412

Pork-Barrel Politics on the Regional Level: Public Subsidies in the Municipalities of the Central Bohemia Region

Peter Spáč, Petr Voda, Stanislav Balík, Michal Pink
Fakulta sociálních studií, Masarykova univerzita, Brno

The politically motivated distribution of public funding, or porkbarrel politics, occurs for various reasons, one of which is the wish to reward political allies over political rivals. Despite the widespread nature of this practice, research in Central Europe has not yet examined this issue at every level of publication administration. The literature that does exist on this subject has mainly focused on national grant programmes, while less attention has been paid to distribution channels at lower-level administrative units. This article focuses on the distribution of subsidies in the municipalities in the Central Bohemia Region between 2014 and 2016. It uses a binary logistic regression to analyse the factors that lead to an application for a subsidy being supported. A negative binomial regression revealed what factors influence the level of subsidy granted. The results of the analysis show that party ties have a strong effect on the odds of a municipality obtaining a subsidy. This factor, however, has less of an effect on how large a subsidy the municipality obtains, and moreover only does so when the distribution of funding is taking place before an election.

Keywords: distributive politics, pork-barrel politics, grants, municipalities, regions, Czech Republic

Published: August 1, 2018Show citation

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Spáč, P., Voda, P., Balík, S., & Pink, M. (2018). Pork-Barrel Politics on the Regional Level: Public Subsidies in the Municipalities of the Central Bohemia Region. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 54(4), 499-528. doi: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.4.412.
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