Climate Impacts, Political Institutions, and Leader Survival: Effects of Droughts and Flooding Precipitation

Oleg Smirnov (), Martin C. Steinwand, Tingyin Xiao and Minghua Zhang
Additional contact information
Oleg Smirnov: Stony Brook University
Martin C. Steinwand: University of Essex
Tingyin Xiao: Princeton University
Minghua Zhang: Stony Brook University

Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, 2018, vol. 2, issue 2, No 4, 201 pages

Abstract: Abstract We explore how the political survival of leaders in different political regimes is affected by drought and flooding precipitation, which are the two major anticipated impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Using georeferenced climate data for the entire world and the Archigos dataset for the period of 1950–2010, we find that irregular political exits, such as coups or revolutions, are not significantly affected by climate impacts. Similarly, drought has a positive but insignificant effect on all types of political exits. On the other hand, we find that floods increase political turnover through the regular means such as elections or term limits. Democracies are better able to withstand the pressures arising from the economic and social disruptions associated with high precipitation than other institutional arrangements. Our results further suggest that, in the context of floods, political institutions play a more important role than economic development for the leaders’ political survival.

Keywords: Political leader survival; Natural disasters; Flooding precipitation; Extreme drought; Democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41885-018-0024-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ediscc:v:2:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s41885-018-0024-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... mental/journal/41885

DOI: 10.1007/s41885-018-0024-7

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Disasters and Climate Change is currently edited by Ilan Noy and Shunsuke Managi

More articles in Economics of Disasters and Climate Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().