Natural disasters and clientelism: The case of floods and landslides in Colombia

Abstract

What are the effects of natural disasters on electoral results? Some authors claim that catastrophes have a negative effect on the survival of leaders in a democracy because voters have a propensity to punish politicians for not preventing or poorly handling a crisis. In contrast, this paper finds that these events might be beneficial for leaders. Disasters are linked to leader survival through clientelism: they generate an inflow of resources in the form of aid, which increase money for buying votes. Analyzing the rainy season of 2010-2011 in Colombia, considered its worst disaster in history, I use a difference-indifferences strategy to show that in the local election incumbent parties benefited from the disaster. The result is robust to different specifications and alternative explanations. Moreover, places receiving more aid and those with judicial evidence of vote-buying irregularities, are more likely to reelect the incumbent, supporting the mechanism proposed by this paper. * I would like to thank Oeindrila Dube, Rebecca Morton, Adam Przeworski and Alastair Smith for helpful comments. Maria Paula Contreras, Diego Eslava, and Gabriel Angarita provided superb research assistance. The usual caveat applies.

When Is It Democratic to Postpone an Election? Elections During Natural Disasters, COVID-19, and Emergency Situations

“…Emergency situations can also bring massive inflows of revenue in the form of donations and humanitarian aid, which increases the cash and resources available for buying votes. There is evidence that this occurred during the rainy season of 2010-2011 in Colombia, and the subsequent 2011 local elections (Gallego 2018). The allocation of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hurricane disaster aid awards in Florida has been shown to have had a positive turnout effect on Republican voters in the November 2004 election but a negative effect on Democratic opposition turnout (Chen 2013).…”

Ebola and State Legitimacy

“…Typically, the increase in vote share is interpreted as the consequence of effective disaster relief providing a strong signal of quality and capacity of the government (Healy and Malhotra, 2010;Bechtel and Hainmueller, 2011;Gasper and Reeves, 2011;Cole et al, 2012). In a recent paper, Gallego (2015) proposes aid-induced availability of resources for buying votes as an alternative mechanism underlying the post-disaster increase in support for incumbents. In addition to changing voting outcomes, Fair et al (2017) show that natural disasters can increase political engagement (turnout and political literacy) and thereby strengthen the democratisation process in developing countries.…”

Disasters and Elections: Estimating the Net Effect of Damage and Relief in Historical Perspective

“…Importantly, the distribution of relief funds was generally seen as efficient and fair-minded: Figure 2 illustrates the strong correlation between flood damage and flood relief at the county level. 6 Compared to many other cases in the literature, this close correlation allows us to eliminate concerns regarding politically motivated relief distribution (Gallego 2012;Reeves 2011).…”

“…Studies that assess the attentive electorate have covered differentiation across "space"-that is, across countries in the modern political era. In addition to studies that focus on the United States, a considerable literature also examines natural disaster and relief operations in other countries (Bechtel and Hainmueller 2011;Cole et al 2012;Fair et al 2013;Gallego 2012). These comparative studies find that voters incorporate government relief in their response to natural disasters and that, in at least some cases, natural disasters can be an electoral boon to incumbent politicians.…”