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Voting after a major flood: Is there a link between democratic experience and retrospective voting?

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  • Rode, Johannes
  • Neugart, Michael

Abstract

Retrospective voting may be an effective instrument for overcoming moral hazard of politicians if voters evaluate the performance of elected representatives correctly. Whether democratic experience helps them to properly assess a policymaker's performance is less well understood. We analyze whether voters are more likely to vote for an incumbent party which launched a disaster relief program and whether voters' behavior is related to their democratic experience. Our identification rests on two natural experiments: a disastrous flood in Germany in 2013, and the separation of Germany into a democratic West and a non-democratic East after World War II. We find a two percentage points increase for the incumbent party in the flooded municipalities in the East compared to the West in the 2013 elections. Testing for several potential explanations, we deem it to be likely that voters with less democratic experience are easier prey to pre-election policies of incumbent parties.

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  • Rode, Johannes & Neugart, Michael, 2019. "Voting after a major flood: Is there a link between democratic experience and retrospective voting?," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203530, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203530
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    2. Cerqua, A. & Ferrante, C. & Letta, M., 2021. "Electoral Earthquake: Natural Disasters and the Geography of Discontent," GLO Discussion Paper Series 790, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    3. De Groote, Olivier & Gautier, Axel & Verboven, Frank, 2024. "The political economy of financing climate policy — Evidence from the solar PV subsidy programs," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    4. Osberghaus, Daniel & Reif, Christiane, 2021. "How do different compensation schemes and loss experience affect insurance decisions? Experimental evidence from two independent and heterogeneous samples," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    5. Cerqua, Augusto & Ferrante, Chiara & Letta, Marco, 2023. "Electoral earthquake: Local shocks and authoritarian voting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    retrospective voting; natural disaster; democratic experience; relief program;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • H84 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Disaster Aid

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