Distributive theories, developed to explain Congressional decision making, predict that legislatures whose members are elected in single-member district representational systems will attempt to return policy benefits to their districts in order to gain re-election. Alternative representational schemes are predicted to produce alternative types of policy distributions. This project investigates the connection between the type of election system cities use and the distribution of capital improvement projects. Using a four city sample, this research will evaluate the distribution of expenditures in two single-member district and two at-large electoral systems. Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) files together with automated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software will be used to map the location of capital improvement expenditures and other critical variables to intra-urban regions. This project will aid in understanding the policy implications that result from the choice of electoral systems in U.S. cities. It should also demonstrate the usefulness of GIS for exploring key hypotheses in urban politics.
