RAPID: Collaborative Research: The Political Costs of Natural Disasters: Democratic Support, Authoritarian Attitudes, and Blame Attribution after Chile's 2010 Earthquake

2010年2月27日，智利发生里氏8.8级地震，随后发生的海啸席卷了整个海岸。虽然首都圣地亚哥遭受的破坏相对较小，但靠近震中的人口中心，如Concepción和塔尔卡，以及智利广阔海岸线上的村庄和城镇，都遭到了破坏。与2005年卡特里娜飓风之后引发的担忧类似，这些可怕的事件引发了人们对智利政府缓慢而笨拙的反应以及随之而来的人道主义危机的政治余震的质疑。该项目调查了最近个人和社区层面的破坏对智利人政治观念和态度的影响。危机状况会影响政治，但主要研究人员认为，在不太成熟的民主国家，对民主价值观和制度本身的支持不那么根深蒂固，这些制度成本的广度和深度可能特别严重。根据现有文献，研究人员假设，当受危机影响的个人应对危机时，他们会表达对现任者不那么有利的态度，但在智利这样的新兴民主国家，也是民主制度。与此同时，pi期望责备归因会因个体而异，并影响对系统的反应。此外，ppi认为，受危机影响的个人将表现出较低的信任和宽容水平。为了评估这些期望，并揭示智利地震对公众舆论和民主态度的影响，本项目在美国晴雨表调查（由范德比尔特大学拉丁美洲民意项目[LAPOP]于2010年4月进行）中增加了一个样本和一系列问题，挖掘了主要国家行为者和机构的个人和社区损害和责任（专制态度已经出现在问卷上）。此外，研究人员在采访过程中增加了地理标记功能，主要是通过GPS单元，这将使他们能够开发一个数据集，其中包括每次采访附近地区的环境、客观损害数据。最后，pi利用多层次模型和匹配技术（以及2008年智利的美国晴雨表调查）来评估受地震影响的人和受影响较小和/或不受影响的人之间的公众舆论变化。该项目做出了一些贡献。首先，在民主制度不那么牢固的国家，目前对自然灾害的政治后果了解甚少。现有的研究表明，长期民主国家的危机状况往往伴随着态度和性格的转变，这种转变会影响公民对民选官员、政治制度及其同胞的态度。在智利等新兴民主国家，政治和社会风险甚至更高，在这些国家，公众对民主的支持非常矛盾。这项研究将有助于更好地理解自然灾害与民主之间的相互作用。第二，到2010年底，这些数据以及所有美国晴雨表2010数据将以多种形式向公众开放，包括LAPOP的免费在线互动网站。第三，使用GPS设备对访谈进行地理标记，并对结果进行分析，将为类似的未来研究提供基础，例如2011年在海地的一个项目。

On February 27, 2010, Chile was rocked by an earthquake registering 8.8 on the Richter scale, followed by a tsunami that ravaged the coast. While the capital, Santiago, experienced comparatively little damage, population centers closer to the epicenter, such as Concepción and Talca, as well as villages and towns along Chile's vast coastline, were devastated. Similar to concerns brought up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, these horrific events raise questions about the political aftershocks of the Chilean state's slow and fumbled response and the ensuing humanitarian crisis. This project investigates the effects of the recent personal- and community-level damage on Chileans' political perceptions and attitudes. Conditions of crisis affect politics, but the principal investigators argue that the breadth and depth of these costs to the system can be particularly severe in less established democracies where support for democratic values and the system itself is less entrenched. Drawing on extant literature, the researchers hypothesize that, as crisis-affected individuals cope they will express attitudes that are less favorable toward the incumbent, but in newer democracies like Chile, also democratic institutions. At the same time, the PIs expect blame attribution will differ across individuals and affect responses toward the system. Further, the PIs argue that crisis-affected individuals will display lower levels of trust and tolerance. To assess these expectations and uncover the ways in which the earthquake in Chile has affected public opinion and democratic attitudes, this project adds an oversample and a battery of questions to the AmericasBarometer survey (conducted by Vanderbilt University's Latin American Public Opinion Project [LAPOP] in April 2010) that tap perceived personal and community damage and blame across key state actors and institutions (authoritarian attitudes are already on the questionnaire). In addition, the researchers add a geo-tagging feature, principally through GPS units, to the interview process, which will allow them to develop a dataset that includes contextual, objective data on damage to the area proximate to each interview. Finally, the PIs make use of both multi-level models and matching techniques (along with the 2008 AmericasBarometer survey of Chile) to assess variation in public opinion across those who were affected by the earthquake and those who were either less affected and/or not affected. The project makes several contributions. First, current knowledge of the political fallout of natural disasters in countries with less firmly entrenched democratic institutions is quite thin. Extant studies indicate that crisis conditions in long-standing democracies are often accompanied by shifts in attitudes and dispositions that can influence how citizens behave towards elected officials, the political system, and their fellow citizens. The political and social stakes are even higher in the context of new democracies such as Chile, where public support for democracy is strikingly ambivalent. This research will contribute to a better understanding of the interaction between natural disasters and democracy. Second, the data, along with all AmericasBarometer 2010 data, will be made accessible in numerous forms, including LAPOP's free online interactive website, by the end of 2010. Third, the use of GPS units to geo-tag interviews, and the resulting analyses, will provide a foundation for similar future research, such as a project in Haiti in 2011.