An Empirical Study on the Distribution of Earmark Grants in the City of Kaohsiung.

My research motivation is stemmed from ""distributive policy"". The theory of distributive policy argues that empowered distributors prefer to allocate more resources to specific groups or areas and transfer costs to the whole population in order to maximize their interests. Distributors who own the political power such as mayors or representatives will bring home the bacon to soliciting votes. There is much research specified on distributive policy, and this research focuses on the distribution of earmark grants. The characteristics of earmark grants are local, small-scale, few beneficiaries, and, most importantly, approved by councilors. It seems that councilors can take credit for earmark grants proposal due to those characteristics. I conduct a case study on earmark grants limited in the Kaohsiung City, and try to realize the relationship between the percentage of votes in 2010 council election and the following distributive behavior of the councilors'' earmark grants during the term of office. According to previous research, they assume that councilors tend to distribute grants to where they gained high vote support, namely, their electoral bases. In addition, there may be the differences between former Kaohsiung County councilors and former Kaohsiung City councilors, as well as councilors with high and low vote support. The findings show that: first, over half of the councilors tend to distribute more grants to their own electoral bases. Second, compared to former Kaohsiung City councilors, former Kaohsiung County councilors are more willing to propose grants for their electoral bases. Third, councilors with lowest vote support, compared to others in the same electoral district, were more willing to bring back the grants to their electoral bases. Finally, earmark grants are obviously inclined to be dispensed to schools or police offices.