 Electoral earthquake: Local shocks and authoritarian votingAugusto Cerqua, Chiara Ferrante and Marco Letta European Economic Review, 2023, vol. 156, issue C Abstract: A growing literature has highlighted the role of economic grievances, global transformations, cultural cleavages and long-term trends of isolation and decline in engendering political discontent. However, this literature is silent on the potential role of unanticipated local shocks in fuelling support for authoritarian parties. We fill this gap by using comprehensive data at a fine spatial scale and a comparative natural experiment approach. Our study documents that the occurrence of two destructive earthquakes in Italy resulted in sharply diverging electoral outcomes: while the 2012 Emilia quake did not alter voting behaviour, the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake paved the way for an impressive and persistent authoritarian backlash in the most affected areas. Such heterogeneous patterns originate from a stark contrast in post-disaster reconstruction processes and shifts in institutional trust. These findings suggest that valence issues generated from local shocks can turn “places that don't recover” into authoritarian hotbeds. Keywords: Elections; Authoritarian voting; Political discontent; Natural disasters; Earthquakes (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:156:y:2023:i:c:s0014292123000934 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023.104464 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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