Hometown bias in Flanders: the impact of ministerial local embeddedness on the distribution of conditional grants (2004–2017)

ABSTRACT

Are grants strategically allocated to towns where ministers live? This question is investigated using panel data covering four legislative periods and 293 Flemish municipalities. The findings provide clear evidence of hometown bias. Ministerial careers related to local embeddedness explain differences in received conditional grants. Ministers, who were once mayors, started their careers locally or predominantly developed upper-level careers to bring more resources to their hometowns. Conversely, ministers, recruited from outside politics, do not generate extra resources. During local election years, ministers in key positions on local lists (leader or pusher) also secure significantly more funding. Investigating grants during federal, regional, and local election years consistently reveals significant hometown bias. This trend persists across various ministerial career trajectories, particularly for ministers who began their careers locally or served as mayors, highlighting the impact of ministerial local embeddedness on grant distribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Pork barrel politics
• Political career paths
• Hometown bias
• Political ambition theory
• Intergovernmental grants
• Fiscal federalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For two of the ministers the classification was less straightforward. These minsters started their career at the upper-level but were also in office as an alderman for short period. Due to the starting point of the career and given that, throughout their careers, they predominantly were also in office at the regional or federal level, they were classified as minsters with an upper career path. Robustness checks show that classifying them alternatively as “careerstartlocal” did not change the results. These two cases are marked with * in the last column of Appendix 1.