Energy inequality and clientelism in the wake of disasters: From colorblind to affirmative power restoration

Fernando Tormos-Aponte, Gustavo García-López and Mary Angelica Painter

Energy Policy, 2021, vol. 158, issue C

Abstract: Do social vulnerabilities and ruling party support shape government responsiveness in times of disasters? The 2017 hurricane María territory-wide power outage, the second longest in world history, is a tragic natural experiment that provides a unique opportunity to examine the determinants of government responsiveness during disaster recovery processes. We use data on power restoration crew deployments (N = 18,614 deployments), a novel measure of government responsiveness, and a new social vulnerability index to assess the determinants of government responsiveness in the wake of disasters. We find that communities with ties to the ruling party elicit greater government responsiveness while socially vulnerable communities are less likely to be prioritized during the disaster relief efforts, controlling for disaster damage as well as logistical, economic, and essential service recovery priorities. Existing power restoration policies place larger burdens on marginalized communities, motivating the need for including power restoration to vulnerable communities among restoration priorities.

Keywords: Environmental justice; Energy justice; Power restoration; Social vulnerability; Natural disasters; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521004201
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:enepol:v:158:y:2021:i:c:s0301421521004201

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112550

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().