Earmarks and Party Loyalty in the U.S. Congress.

Partisan theories of lawmaking (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005; Rohde 1991) assume that the leadership can influence a member's voting behavior with various "carrots and sticks." Although current House rules specifically prohibit the practice, one potential carrot the leadership has at its disposal to encourage party unity is to dole out earmarks, or line-item projects added to appropriations bills, on the basis of faithfulness to the party. Historically, it has been difficult to test if parties use earmarks in this fashion because the projects were not tied to a specific member. However, due to recent changes in the House rules that require members to attach their names to pet projects, we are now able to better understand how earmarks are distributed. In this paper, we will seek to determine if the leadership can effectively use earmarks as a way to increase party line voting amongst the rank-and-file. Alternatively, we will also test the hypothesis that the sub-committee chairs and ranking members control most of the earmark dollars and use the process to further other goals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]