Distributive politics—or pork barreling—is prevalent across many political systems. It aims to influence the vote by directing discretionary spending to constituencies and/or groups of voters that are important for their re-election. We term this the objective dimension to pork barreling. However, we argue that for pork barreling to deliver rewards, voters must also be aware that they are gaining a special benefit from government—the subjective dimension. Using a unique Australian dataset that matches spending on electoral areas with a large scale national survey that asked voters if their area had received special benefits, we clarify the mechanisms behind pork barreling. Our results show that about one in five voters believed that their electorate had received additional benefits. Objectively, spending was disproportionately directed to government-held seats. Despite this largesse, we find that pork barreling had little or no effect on the vote in the 2022 Australian election.

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2022 年澳大利亚大选中的分配政治和选举优势

分配政治——或者说“猪肉桶”——在许多政治体系中都很普遍。它的目的是通过将可自由支配的支出引导至对其连任很重要的选区和/或选民群体来影响投票。我们将其称为猪肉桶装的客观维度。然而，我们认为，为了让猪肉桶带来回报，选民还必须意识到他们正在从政府那里获得特殊的利益——主观维度。使用澳大利亚独特的数据集，将选区的支出与一项大规模全国调查相匹配，该调查询问选民他们所在的地区是否获得了特殊福利，我们澄清了猪肉桶背后的机制。我们的结果显示，大约五分之一的选民认为他们的选民获得了额外的福利。客观地说，支出不成比例地流向了政府占据的席位。尽管有如此慷慨，我们发现猪肉桶对 2022 年澳大利亚大选的投票影响很小或没有影响。