Government Redistribution in the Shadow of Legislative Elections: A Study of the Illinois Member Initiative Grants Program1 Michael C. Herron2 Brett A. Theodos3 November 7, 2002 1A earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA. The authors thank Anthony Gierzynski, Melissa Herman, Jerrold Schneider, and Alan Wiseman for comments on previous drafts, the Ginsberg Fund of the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University for ¯nancial support, and Jonathan Smith of Northwestern University Information Technology for GIS consulting. Parts of Section 2 are explicitly incorporated from the unpublished undergraduate thesis written by Brett A. Theodos. The views expressed in this paper are those solely of the authors. 2Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, and Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208{1006 (
[email protected]). 3Received B.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University in June, 2002 (
[email protected]). Abstract Government redistribution programs designed by elected legislatures are subject to political manipulation insofar as the legislators who design such programs can use them to boost aggregate wealth levels in key electoral districts, ignore districts deemed to be of lesser importance, and so forth. In light of this general proposition, we conduct a case study of an Illinois state government program called \member initiative spending" and examine the extent to which three competing theories|two of which draw explicitly on electoral competition and one of which is apolitical|are able to explain this program's funding allocations across Illinois.