Particularism is the provision of goods and services that exclusively benefit a specific set of recipients, even when the collective costs of providing the goods and services outweigh the collective benefits. Political scientists have argued that two conditions are necessary to generate particularistic behavior by legislators: personal votes and the desire for reelection. With regard to the first condition, certain electoral rules generate incentives for legislators to cultivate personal reputations, which, in turn, can encourage legislators to provide particularistic goods to their personal supporters, even at the expense of the programmatic policy concerns of their parties (Carey and Shugart in press; Myerson 1993). The second condition is logically inseparable from the first: the incentive to cultivate personal constituencies is driven by the desire to secure reelection. Political scientists are in such widespread agreement on this point that it has reached near axiomatic status. Academics who differ on fundamental issues nevertheless concur that legislative behavior is driven by the desire for reelection (Cox and McCubbins 1993; Downs 1957; Fenno 1978; Mayhew 1974). This unusual consensus is a product of the scarcity of political systems in which legislators are prohibited from reelection. In short, political science has rarely considered the nature of legislative behavior in lieu of an electoral connection because so few legislators in any political systems are barred from reelection.

The assumption that reelection is allowed, however, is logically necessary to any explanation of particularism based on electoral rules.