Disastrous Discretion: Political Bias in Relief Allocation Varies Substantially with Disaster Severity

Abstract

Allocation decisions are vulnerable to political influence, but it is unclear in which situations politicians use their discretionary power in a partisan manner. We analyze the allocation of presidential disaster declarations in the United States, exploiting the spatiotemporal randomness of all hurricane strikes from 1965-2018 along with changes in political alignment. We show that decisions are unbiased when disasters are either very strong or weak. Only after medium-intensity hurricanes do areas governed by presidents' co-partisans receive up to twice as many declarations. This hump-shaped political bias explains 8.3 percent of overall relief spending, totaling about USD 400 million per year.