Voters' Partisan Behaviour and Government's Election Strategies for Local Funding Provision: Theory and Empirical Evidence in Australia

Abstract

Abstract Firstly, this thesis aims to demonstrate theoretically that different proportion of partisan and non-partisan voters entails different election strategies for the government when it provides local funding. Secondly, this thesis aims to find the empirical evidence of the existence of government's election strategies and if they do exist, what are the exact strategies chosen by the government. These election strategies are whether to fund marginal or safe electorates, and whether to fund aligned or unaligned electorates. Four predictions are yielded from the theoretical model discussed in this thesis and two of them are empirically tested in Australia. The empirical results contradict the theoretical predictions.