Lesser of Two Evils: Allocating Resources to Opposition Districts in Pakistan

Though many scholars find that incumbent party legislators benefit from higher access to distributive resources than opposition ones, there is less attention on how resources are distributed among opposition districts. In most contexts, opposition districts cannot be fully cut off from funds and opposition legislators get credit for spending in their constituencies, which harms the ruling party. I argue that, in such situations, the incumbent party will discriminate between its own legislators and opposition ones but this discrimination will be based on opposition swing districts being punished rather than opposition strongholds. Using data on federal development funds from Pakistan and fixed-effects estimators, I show that the difference in funds between opposition and ruling party legislators is driven by opposition swing districts while their core areas have similar access as the incumbent party’s own districts. The findings further our understanding of distributive politics and have potential implications for long-term development patterns.