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Managing Homeland Security in American States: Politics versus Risk in State Allocations of Federal Security Grants
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Politics versus Risk in State Allocations of Federal Security Grants
Dr. Holly T. Goerdel
Assistant Professor of Public Administration
University of Kansas
## email not listed ##
Abstract
Despite popular disparagement of homeland security programming and policies, few social
scientists have considered the question of whether our democracy has rationally protected itself against domestic terrorism, or whether distributive politics has crowded out security imperatives. In this paper I apply distributive political theory to the question of whether politics versus risk determines government spending across four of the largest intergovernmental grant programs purposed for homeland security. I test a full empirical model of intergovernmental security funding across 50 U.S. states from 2004-2006. Findings support political dominance over risk-based factors when programs are designed to award universal benefits to key institutional decision makers. On the other hand, risk factors are predominately responsible for increasing funding for programs associated with narrow, particularistic benefits, even as they are strongly contested by political officials in power. A key conclusion is that fair-share strategies in intergovernmental grant politics actually produce unfair, or irrational, allocation outcomes in the area of security: the protection of status quo formulas is very much in the interest of political actors, especially if it means they might otherwise miss out on the opportunity to secure fiscal resources for constituents (in this case, state and local governments) in a severely distressed economy – even at the expense of compromising security for all citizens through misallocation.
Presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 3-6, 2009, Chicago,
IL. Full paper and data are available from the author upon request.
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Politics versus Risk in State Allocations of Federal Security Grants
Dr. Holly T. Goerdel
Assistant Professor of Public Administration
University of Kansas
## email not listed ##
Abstract
Despite popular disparagement of homeland security programming and policies, few social
scientists have considered the question of whether our democracy has rationally protected itself against
domestic terrorism, or whether distributive politics has crowded out security imperatives. In this paper I
apply distributive political theory to the question of whether politics versus risk determines government
spending across four of the largest intergovernmental grant programs purposed for homeland security. I
test a full empirical model of intergovernmental security funding across 50 U.S. states from 2004-2006.
Findings support political dominance over risk-based factors when programs are designed to award
universal benefits to key institutional decision makers. On the other hand, risk factors are predominately
responsible for increasing funding for programs associated with narrow, particularistic benefits, even as
they are strongly contested by political officials in power. A key conclusion is that fair-share strategies in
intergovernmental grant politics actually produce unfair, or irrational, allocation outcomes in the area of
security: the protection of status quo formulas is very much in the interest of political actors, especially if
it means they might otherwise miss out on the opportunity to secure fiscal resources for constituents (in
this case, state and local governments) in a severely distressed economy – even at the expense of
compromising security for all citizens through misallocation.
Presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 3-6, 2009, Chicago,
IL. Full paper and data are available from the author upon request.
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