IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_10531.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Political Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Weimar Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Bauernschuster
  • Matthias Blum
  • Erik Hornung
  • Christoph Koenig

Abstract

How do health crises affect election results? We combine a panel of election results from 1893–1933 with spatial heterogeneity in excess mortality due to the 1918 Influenza to assess the pandemic’s effect on voting behavior across German constituencies. Applying a dynamic differences-in-differences approach, we find that areas with higher influenza mortality saw a lasting shift towards left-wing parties. We argue that pandemic intensity increased the salience of public health policy, prompting voters to reward parties signaling competence in health issues. Alternative explanations such as pandemic-induced economic hardship, punishment of incumbents for inadequate policy responses, or polarization of the electorate towards more extremist parties are not supported by our findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Bauernschuster & Matthias Blum & Erik Hornung & Christoph Koenig, 2023. "The Political Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Weimar Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 10531, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10531
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10531.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Bauernschuster & Matthias Blum & Erik Hornung & Christoph Koenig, 2023. "How the 1918 influenza pandemic affected voting in the Weimar Republic," ECONtribute Policy Brief Series 053, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    2. Felix Kersting, 2023. "Mimicking the Opposition: Bismarck's Welfare State and the Rise of the Socialists," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 448, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pandemics; elections; health; voting behavior; issue salience; issue ownership; Weimar Republic;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10531. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.