I also have research on local environmental politics in Mexico. I am particularly interested in understanding the relationship between democratic accountability and environmental factors, including the provision of key environmental public goods (such as clean air) and disasters associated with natural hazards, for example earthquakes.

When Electoral Responsiveness Hurts Voters: Evidence from Electoral Pollution Cycles in Mexican Municipalities

Shiran Victoria Shen, Cesar B. Martinez-Alvarez, and Edgar Franco

Under Review

Can electoral responsiveness hurt voters? In contrast to the existing literature on voter support for policies with immediate positive outcomes, we theorize conditions under which politicians’ pursuit of voters’ preferred policy can also have immediate adverse consequences for voters’ welfare. Leveraging the exogeneity of the local electoral calendar, we find that state governors in Mexico are particularly incentivized to sacrifice a critical type of public good—air quality—and inadvertently harm public health in election years. The “electoral pollution cycle” is particularly prominent when the level of electoral competition is high. The phenomenon is explained by regulatory forbearance rather than economic growth. It unveils how voters could fail to internalize the tradeoffs between different forms of welfare improvement

Natural Hazards, Social Policy, and Electoral Performance: Evidence from Mexico

Cesar B. Martinez-Alvarez and Jose Maria Rodriguez-Valadez

Under Review

Do large-scale and unexpected damaging events, such as disasters associated with natural hazards, affect electoral outcomes? If so, why? We argue that the ability to strategically distribute government programs to the affected populations offers an electoral advantage to candidates from the incumbent party compared to the other contenders. To test the validity of these claims, we study the electoral consequences of the 19-S earthquake in Mexico City (September 2017) on the 2018 gubernatorial and mayoral elections in the city, employing fine-grained, geo-referenced data at the precinct level. We find that spatial proximity to the damage caused by the earthquake is associated with higher vote shares for the then incumbent PRD and worse electoral performance for the main challenger (MORENA). Moreover, we present evidence that the implementation of disaster recovery policy is a mechanism behind this relationship: actions to reduce future risk explain part of this electoral advantage, whereas credits for housing reconstruction do not. Hence, our results suggest that policy is a key reason why large-scale and unexpected damaging events, such as earthquakes, affect elections. Our results contribute to the literature on the political dimensions of natural hazards.