Essays in disasters, public opinion, and political economy
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Disasters can be defining political moments for individuals, communities, and nations. The unpredictable nature of certain disasters makes them ideal natural experiments to study how various disruptions effect local residents, communities, and the political systems that govern them. This dissertation uses disasters as natural experiments to examine two phenomena: how stressful events shape public opinion, and how politicians allocate resources to their supporters. Chapter 1 examines the effect of three types of disasters – hurricanes, mass shootings, and wildfires – on public opinion in the United States. Traditional Bayesian theory suggests a disaster should affect policy opinions for salient policies, but not for seemingly unrelated policies, and that these effects should be the same for everyone. However, I find disasters have a moderating effect in local communities, moving both liberals and conservatives toward the center. I also observe spillover effects to unrelated policies. These effects are significant and consistent for hurricanes and mass shootings, but not wildfires. Chapter 2 explores a closely related question, focusing on the effect of mass shootings on support for gun control policies in the medium- and long-run. I find small but significant increases in support for an assault weapons ban among residents who live closer to a mass shooting. My analysis uses surveys from 2013-2019, and find similar effects to analysis using earlier surveys, which suggests the effects of mass shootings on the immediate local communities have not substantially declined over time. Chapter 3 uses earthquakes as a natural experiment to investigate political favoritism in Indonesia. I find evidence that district mayors direct recovery resources to prioritize villages that are aligned with their party. These villages experience smaller reductions in nighttime light following earthquakes than unaligned villages do. In fact, political alignment appears to entirely mitigate the negative effect of earthquakes within two years.
Description
License
Attribution 4.0 International