Barking Up the Wrong Tree: How Political Alignment Shapes Electoral Backlash from Natural Disasters

• Author: Johannes Urpelainen,Joonseok Yang,Ryan Kennedy,Brian Blankenship
• Published date: 01 June 2021
• Date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020970211
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020970211

Comparative Political Studies

2021, Vol. 54(7) 1163 –1196

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414020970211

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Article

Barking Up the Wrong

Tree: How Political

Alignment Shapes

Electoral Backlash from

Natural Disasters

Brian Blankenship1, Ryan Kennedy2,

Johannes Urpelainen3, and Joonseok Yang4

Abstract

While scholarship on “retrospective voting” has found that incumbent

politicians can be punished for a range of events outside their control, the

literature has paid scant attention to the role of political alignment between

the different levels of government in disaster responses and its imp lications for

voting decisions. We argue that retrospective voters punish only opposition

incumbents (candidates in office but not aligned with the government

leader), who have limited acc ess to government resources for relief, for

natural disasters. We use monthly data on precipitation and evaporation to

capture droughts and floods in India’s four thousand State Assembly electoral

constituencies over the years 1977–2007. Consistent with our hypothesis,

we find that Members of State Assembly from the party of the Prime or Chief

Minister do not face an electoral backlash under bad weather conditions

during the monsoon season, whereas opposition politicians face major losses.

Keywords

retrospective voting, natural disasters, drought, India, alignment

1University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

2University of Houston, TX, USA

3Johns Hopkins SAIS, Washington, DC, USA

4Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea

Corresponding Author:

Joonseok Yang, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2, Seonggyungwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03063,

Republic of Korea.

Email: jsyang01@skku.edu

970211CPSXXX10.1177/0010414020970211Comparative Political StudiesBlankenship et al.

research-article2020

1164 Comparative Political Studies 54(7)

Introduction

Scholarship on “retrospective voting” has found voters punish governments

for exogenous events, such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or crime

waves (Fiorina, 1981; Healy & Malhotra, 2013; Key, 1966). In studies from

the United States and India, for example, there is a robust relationship

between floods or droughts and an electoral backlash against the incumbent

(Cole et al., 2012; Malhotra & Kuo, 2008). However, the relationship appears

to be complicated by the government’s ability to provide voters relief (Bechtel

& Hainmueller, 2011; Chen, 2013; Gasper & Reeves, 2011; Healy &

Malhotra, 2009, 2010).

We argue that certain incumbent politicians are systematically better posi-

tioned to provide relief to their constituents. This variation shapes incum-

bents’ likelihood of being punished for natural disasters. In particular, because

local politicians are often dependent on the assistance of policymakers at the

state or national level, local officials who are aligned with politicians at

higher levels of government are advantaged in efforts to obtain relief funding.

As a result, incumbents who are aligned with the party in power at the state

or national level will be less likely to be electorally punished in the aftermath

of a disaster.

Existing studies tend to focus either on the effects of disasters on electoral

outcomes (Cole et al., 2012; Malhotra & Kuo, 2008) or on the political deter-

minants of relief (Bastos & Miller, 2013; Reeves, 2011). Other studies find

that relief mitigates electoral backlash (Bechtel & Hainmueller, 2011; Chen,

2013; Cole et al., 2012; Gasper & Reeves, 2011; Healy & Malhotra, 2009,

2010), and investigate voter preferences over relief allocation (Bechtel &

Mannino, 2017). However, existing studies leave open the question of why

some politicians are able to provide more relief than others. Our theory pro-

vides a unified explanation, at least within this institutional context, that links

these disparate phenomena—natural disasters, the ability to provide relief,

and electoral outcomes—by addressing a key condition under which relief is

more likely: when incumbents have allies in the party in power in the state or

national government.

To test this theory, we use monthly values of the climatic water balance for

India’s 4,313 state electoral constituencies during the 1977–2007 period. The

advantage of our approach is that we can measure weather patterns in politi-

cal constituencies—the relevant electoral unit—instead of the much larger

administrative districts. We can also support our identifying assumptions by

showing that constituency characteristics, based on a comprehensive enu-

meration of all Indian villages from the 2001 Census of India, are not corre-

lated with abnormal weather.

Blankenship et al. 1165

Estimating both parametric and non-parametric regressions, we show vot-

ers penalize incumbent politicians (i.e., Members of State Assembly, MLAs)

for natural disasters. However, the logic of these penalties is fully consistent

with retrospective voting: the punishment is limited to opposition incum-

bents—those who are not aligned with the nation’s prime minister (PM) or

the state chief minister (CM). Moreover, the effects are large—non-aligned

incumbents during severe weather anomalies lose 2% to 5% of their vote

share. Finally, results are not driven by differences in incumbent quality; the

results are robust to including incumbent candidate fixed effects.

We also shed light on the mechanisms of electoral backlash. First, we

demonstrate that drought and heavy rainfall do not affect voter turnout.

Instead, voters move their support from non-aligned incumbents to other can-

didates. Second, using household data, we show that drought and heavy rain-

fall are associated with a reduction in people’s confidence in politicians.

Finally, the same household data demonstrates that people who have access

to relief are less likely to punish politicians for natural disasters.

The findings provide new insight into natural disasters and voting behav-

iors in a federal structure by showing the role of political alignment across

different levels of governments in disaster response. While several studies

have theorized how a federal system affects voting decisions (e.g.,

Arceneaux, 2006; Carsey & Wright, 1998) and suggested the conditions

under which voters attribute blame to local governments in the wake of natu-

ral disasters, such as salience and direct experience of the events (Arceneaux

& Stein, 2006), existing studies have generally overlooked the implications

of political alignment. Our study, however, shows that structural advantages

from political alignment, leading to greater relief assistance, is an important

explanatory variable for voting decisions after extreme weather events.

The implications for democratic accountability are troubling. If people

punish non-aligned incumbents, they are not rewarding disaster relief in a

rational, forward-looking sense. Instead, they are naively punishing non-

aligned incumbents for forces beyond their control. In Cohen and Werker’s

(2008) model of responding to natural disasters, governments have incentives

to withhold relief from areas controlled by the political opposition, and we

provide evidence for these incentives. Not only does the government have an

incentive to focus on areas that it controls, but it also has an incentive to penal-

ize areas that have elected members of opposition parties to the State Assembly.

Natural Disasters and Electoral Politics

Natural disasters are not caused by government, but the damage they cause

depends on the government’s preparedness and relief efforts. To account for