Joseph M. Tonon, Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis
Marc T. Law, Department of Economics, University of Vermont
At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF), decisions about which scientific research projects to fund are largely made by other scientists. Appropriations for research projects at other agencies, especially those at the Defense Department, NASA, and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) are not. For instance, at the USDA, only 8.5 percent of USDA research dollars were allocated to the peer-review competitive process. At these agencies, decisions about which research projects to fund are made by members of Congress through a process called "earmarking." The appropriations committees let the USDA know which projects should be funded through a system of "special grants." Since the early 1970s, an increasing amount of federal agricultural research dollars has been spent on earmarked special grants.
In our research we investigate the causes and consequences of the earmarking of agricultural research projects. To date, our work has focused on the origins and persistence of the earmarked special grants program and the peculiar budgetary politics that supports the earmarking of agricultural research funded by the USDA. Future work will investigate the role that particular Congressional institutions (specifically, membership in the House and Senate Subcommittees on Agricultural Appropriations) play in determining the allocation of earmarked special research grants. Our preliminary empirical results suggest that agricultural appropriators in Congress are important beneficiaries of the earmarked special research grants. Earmarked special research grants are not randomly distributed across Congressional districts or even across districts with farming interests. Controlling for other factors, districts that are represented by agricultural appropriators are far more likely to receive earmarked special grants. This is perhaps not too surprising, since earmarking allows appropriators to claim credit for having "brought home the bacon," which, in turn, facilitates their re-election to Congress.
Our research would clearly be impossible without access to government documents. Detailed information on the individual special research grants that are earmarked by Congress are contained in two sources. The first is the notes to the Conference Report that accompanies annual Agricultural Appropriations legislation. These notes are published in the Congressional Serial Set. The second is the House and Senate's annual audit of USDA appropriations. By combining this data with information on appropriations committee membership, we have been able to uncover the role that politics plays in the allocation of agricultural research funds.
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