Natural Disasters and Political Participation: Evidence from the 2002 and 2013 Floods in Germany
Natural Disasters and Political Participation: Evidence from the 2002 and 2013 Floods in Germany
复制标题
自然灾害与政治参与：来自 2002 年和 2013 年德国洪水的证据
DOI：
10.1080/09644008.2017.1287900
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
1.4
通讯作者：
P. Kuhn
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
L. Rudolph;P. Kuhn
自然灾害如何影响选举参与？现有的社会科学文献提供了相互矛盾的预测。社会学和心理学的大量研究表明，创伤性事件可以激发亲社会行为，这可能会增加投票率。然而，政治学长期以来一直认为，即使是对低效益活动的参与成本的微小变化也会导致公民参与的大幅下降。因此，自然灾害应减少选举参与。我们展示了如何这些不同的意见，可以共同分析的Riker-Ordeshook模型的投票。然后，本文报告了2002年和2013年德国洪水对萨克森和巴伐利亚州联邦和州选举投票率的影响，这些选举在洪水发生后几周进行。分析社区一级的投票率数据，并借鉴一个差异中的差异框架，我们发现，洪水曝光率有一致的负面影响。这表明，在我们的情况下，投票成本的增加超过了政治参与的任何增加，并与发展中国家的调查结果形成鲜明对比，在这些国家，洪水管理令人信服地与选举参与有关。
How do natural disasters affect electoral participation? The existing social science literature offers contradictory predictions. A considerable body of research in sociology and psychology suggests that traumatic events can inspire pro-social behaviour, which might increase turnout. Yet, political science has long held that even minor changes to participation costs of low benefit activities can lead to considerable drops in civic engagement. Consequently, natural disasters should reduce electoral participation. We show how these distinct views can be jointly analysed within the Riker–Ordeshook model of voting. This paper then reports results on the impact of the 2002 and 2013 floods in Germany on turnout in federal and state elections in Saxony and Bavaria, conducted few weeks after the floods. Analysing community level turnout data, and drawing on a difference-in-differences framework, we find that flood exposure has a consistent negative effect on turnout. This indicates that the increase in the costs of voting outweighed any increase in political engagement in our case and stands in contrast to findings from developing contexts, where flood management was convincingly linked to electoral participation.