Short-Sighted Demands, Long-Term Consequences: When Political Competition Undermines Disaster Preparedness

Natural disasters span political boundaries, yet their devastating impacts vary widely across political jurisdictions. I argue that this is because of the differences in political incentives to uphold regulations concerning disaster preparedness. Turkey’s 2023 earthquake provides a rare empirical window to observe the cumulative effects of otherwise hidden political incentives. Leveraging the quasi-random shock of the earthquake, I employ a spatial regression discontinuity design along municipal boundaries in the earthquake region. I treat long-term party rule as the treatment and neighborhood-level destruction as the outcome. The analysis shows that neighborhoods governed by the same municipal party for more than 25 years experienced approximately 20\% less destruction than their adjacent, politically contested counterparts. These findings translate into substantially lower exposure of hundreds of residents to known disaster risks. The results demonstrate that electoral competition without institutional brakes can deteriorate long-term policy outcomes. My paper underscores the importance of sharing accountability with technocratic oversight in policy areas requiring sustained infrastructural investment, such as disaster preparedness.