Extreme weather and contentious elections

Abstract

The impact of extreme weather events on electoral processes is not well understood, yet as the climate changes, such events are predicted to become more common. This highlights the need for scholars to investigate how natural hazards affect election campaigns and electoral administration. Drawing on data from the Electoral Contention and Violence dataset, this article uses a difference-in-differences approach to assess the effect of tropical storms on electoral contention over seven elections held in the Philippines between 1992 and 2010. It finds that storms that occur in the year leading up to an election increase, and that this effect is likely accounted for by both economic grievances consequent upon the negative impact of storms on agricultural output and grievances generated by storm-induced disruptions to the electoral process. These findings suggest that as climate change intensifies, – and the violence that contention often entails – could become more common in a number of contexts. This has implications for electoral administration, and it implies the need for cooperation across electoral and meteorological agencies in places where weather extremes are likely to occur in the runup to electoral events.