Universalism and targeting: The distribution of federal aid monies

The behavior of national legislators has made for interesting studies relating election goals and game theory strategies to the formation of coalitions on policy packages. These theories regarding behavior can become most useful when linkages are made to policy consequences. This study examines federal domestic aid programs in the 1980's in an attempt to identify the trade-offs between universalism and targeting as applied to federal policy outcomes. Tests for the presence of these outcomes are performed and the nature of the relationship between them is explored. The results show some support for the geographic widening of programmatic aid as a program ages, depending upon program characteristics. In addition, little progressive targeting is found to occur across programs, while this varies depending upon the type of aid recipient