IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0832.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Drought and Political Trust

Author

Listed:
  • Ahlerup, Pelle

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Sundström, Aksel
  • Jagers, Sverker C
  • Sjöstedt, Martin

Abstract

Droughts can affect people’s political trust positively, through rallying effects, or negatively, through blame attribution. We examine how drought conditions affect political trust in the context of Africa. We link high-precision exogenous climate data to survey respondents, 2002–2018, and report moderate negative effects of drought conditions on people’s trust in their president. These negative effects increase with the severity of drought conditions. The political economy of favoritism, where some regions are preferentially treated by rulers, should result in heterogeneous effects across territories. We find that trust increases in capital regions and in leader birth regions during dry conditions. In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regions. This is in line with the idea that capital regions and leader birth regions could be preferentially treated in the aftermath of droughts. Understanding these processes further is important given their salience because of global warming.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahlerup, Pelle & Sundström, Aksel & Jagers, Sverker C & Sjöstedt, Martin, 2023. "Drought and Political Trust," Working Papers in Economics 832, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0832
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/75992
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael M. Bechtel & Jens Hainmueller, 2011. "How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 852-868, October.
    2. Robin Burgess & Remi Jedwab & Edward Miguel & Ameet Morjaria & Gerard Padró i Miquel, 2015. "The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1817-1851, June.
    3. Posner,Daniel N., 2005. "Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521541794.
    4. Citrin, Jack, 1974. "Comment: The Political Relevance of Trust in Government," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 973-988, September.
    5. Kasara, Kimuli, 2007. "Tax Me If You Can: Ethnic Geography, Democracy, and the Taxation of Agriculture in Africa," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(1), pages 159-172, February.
    6. Courtland Adams & Tobias Ide & Jon Barnett & Adrien Detges, 2018. "Sampling bias in climate–conflict research," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(3), pages 200-203, March.
    7. Robert Shupp & Scott Loveridge & Mark Skidmore & Jungmin Lim & Cynthia Rogers, 2017. "Risk, Loss, and Ambiguity Aversion after a Natural Disaster," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 121-142, July.
    8. Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone, 2011. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 923-947, May.
    9. Fuchs, Alan & Rodriguez-Chamussy, Lourdes, 2014. "Voter response to natural disaster aid : quasi-experimental evidence from drought relief payments in Mexico," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6836, The World Bank.
    10. John T. Gasper & Andrew Reeves, 2011. "Make It Rain? Retrospection and the Attentive Electorate in the Context of Natural Disasters," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(2), pages 340-355, April.
    11. Knutsen, Tora & Kotsadam, Andreas, 2020. "The political economy of aid allocation: Aid and incumbency at the local level in Sub Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    12. Alberto F. Ades & Edward L. Glaeser, 1995. "Trade and Circuses: Explaining Urban Giants," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 195-227.
    13. Xun Gong & Shenggang Yang & Min Zhang, 2017. "Not Only Health: Environmental Pollution Disasters and Political Trust," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-28, April.
    14. Nina von Uexkull & Marco d’Errico & Julius Jackson, 2020. "Drought, Resilience, and Support for Violence: Household Survey Evidence from DR Congo," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 64(10), pages 1994-2021, November.
    15. Solomon Hsiang & Marshall Burke, 2014. "Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 123(1), pages 39-55, March.
    16. Bedran-Martins, Ana Maria & Lemos, Maria Carmen, 2017. "Politics of drought under Bolsa Família program in Northeast Brazil," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 7, pages 15-21.
    17. Posner,Daniel N., 2005. "Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521833981.
    18. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Henri L.F. de Groot & Anton B.T.M. van Schaik, 2004. "Trust and economic growth: a robustness analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(1), pages 118-134, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Luca, Giacomo & Hodler, Roland & Raschky, Paul A. & Valsecchi, Michele, 2018. "Ethnic favoritism: An axiom of politics?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 115-129.
    2. Elena Perra, 2022. "Road to Division: Ethnic Favouritism in the Provision of Road Infrastructure in Ethiopia," Working Papers - Economics wp2022_01.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    3. Nemera Mamo & Sambit Bhattacharyya, 2018. "Natural Resources and Political Patronage in Africa: An Ethnicity Level Analysis," Working Paper Series 0418, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    4. Robin Burgess & Remi Jedwab & Edward Miguel & Ameet Morjaria & Gerard Padró i Miquel, 2015. "The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1817-1851, June.
    5. Bluhm, Richard & Thomsson, Kaj, 2020. "Holding on? Ethnic divisions, political institutions and the duration of economic declines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    6. Franck, Raphaã‹L & Rainer, Ilia, 2012. "Does the Leader's Ethnicity Matter? Ethnic Favoritism, Education, and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 106(2), pages 294-325, May.
    7. Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2020. "Historical Legacies and African Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 53-128, March.
    8. Ole Magnus Theisen & Håvard Strand & Gudrun Østby, 2020. "Ethno-political favouritism in maternal health care service delivery: Micro-level evidence from sub-Saharan Africa, 1981–2014," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 3-27, March.
    9. Amodio, Francesco & Chiovelli, Giorgio & Hohmann, Sebastian, 2019. "The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics," IZA Discussion Papers 12818, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Kosec, Katrina & Mo, Cecilia Hyunjung, 2017. "Aspirations and the Role of Social Protection: Evidence from a Natural Disaster in Rural Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 49-66.
    11. Bluhm, Richard & Hodler, Roland & Schaudt, Paul, 2021. "Local majorities: How administrative divisions shape comparative development," Economics Working Paper Series 2110, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    12. Stephan Schneider & Sven Kunze, 2021. "Disastrous Discretion: Ambiguous Decision Situations Foster Political Favoritism," KOF Working papers 21-491, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    13. Arcangelo Dimico, 2017. "Size Matters: The Effect of the Size of Ethnic Groups on Development," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(3), pages 291-318, June.
    14. Mai Hassan, 2017. "The Strategic Shuffle: Ethnic Geography, the Internal Security Apparatus, and Elections in Kenya," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(2), pages 382-395, April.
    15. Cavalcanti, Francisco, 2018. "Voters sometimes provide the wrong incentives. The lesson of the Brazilian drought industry," MPRA Paper 88317, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. John Porten & Inbok Rhee & Clark Gibson, 2021. "Ethnicity is not public service destiny: The political logic of service distribution in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-63, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Metin M. Coşgel & Thomas J. Miceli & Sadullah Yıldırım, 2023. "Religion, rulers, and conflict," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 439-480, September.
    18. Anaxagorou, Christiana & Efthyvoulou, Georgios & Sarantides, Vassilis, 2020. "Electoral motives and the subnational allocation of foreign aid in sub-Saharan Africa," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    19. Porten, John & Rhee, Inbok & Gibson, Clark, 2022. "Ethnicity is not public service destiny: The political logic of service distribution in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    20. Thilo Bodenstein & Achim Kemmerling, 2017. "The European Union as a Collective Actor: Aid and Trade in African Public Opinion," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35(4), pages 567-586, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Africa; Drought; Afrobarometer; Trust; Climate change; Disasters;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0832. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ann-Christin Räätäri Nyström (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/naiguse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.