Pork-Barrelling in Britain: A Review

Abstract

Pork-barrelling (PB) is defined as that subset of political resource allocation decisions that is both overtly vote-catching and has an explicit spatial component. From comments on the implications of this definition, the prospects for PB being present in Britain are discussed from a back-cloth comparison between political systems in Britain and the United States of America. The ‘motives’, ‘means’, and ‘opportunities' for PB in Britain are adjudged, and a review made of possible areas of such political activity, among individual members of parliament, in one-off Westminster decisions, in more continuous streams of central government policy, in the spheres of parliamentary boundary reform and the Rate Support Grant, and among the political activities of local authorities. There is little indisputable evidence for PB in Britain, and the conclusion suggests this may be consequential on a number of different factors.