Federal agencies can ‘buy’ support in states, especially among citizens with whom they are ideologically aligned

Every year, federal agencies award around $1 trillion in grants and contracts. How do these awards influence public support for government agencies? In new research that examines how citizens evaluate the performance of seven federal agencies, Susan M. Miller finds that when an agency spends more money in a state, citizens’ evaluations of that agency improve. When citizens and an agency are ideologically aligned, the probability that citizens approve of an agency’s performance can increase by as much as 29 percentage points.