ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses two countries from East Central Europe (ECE), Hungary and Poland, for which territorial-administrative structures differ markedly. It shows that in both countries political loyalty towards the central government has been positively associated with the per capita amount of funds spent at the local and the regional level. The chapter offers a brief review of the literature and formulates the hypotheses. It proceeds by introducing the data and the analytical approach, and discusses the empirical results. EU-supported projects are typically implemented in localities nested within sub-national regions. The analysis therefore simultaneously estimates regional- and local-level effects on the distribution of EU grants. The coefficients of the local political variables reveal that while the electoral popularity of the PO was positively associated with EU funds, votes for the junior coalition partner, the PSL, were negatively related to per capita grants.
