Events

Abstract:  Large-scale disruptions to everyday infrastructure are becoming more frequent due to climate change, population growth, and increased user demand. While the political consequences of gradual changes in public service quality are relatively well understood, we know less about the electoral consequences of public service breakdowns where these services were once reliable and readily accessible. To address this critical question, I use the quasi-random allocation of electric outages in South Africa to examine how the breakdown of public services influences voting behavior. I show that each additional hour of outages in the week before the 2021 elections lowered the incumbent's vote share. Crucially, this effect was primarily driven by decreased turnout among incumbent supporters, particularly in areas lacking credible opposition parties. These findings are further validated using individual-level responses from South African survey respondents. With energy crises expected to intensify over the next several decades, the results have implications for the literatures on public-goods provision, climate resilience, and democratic accountability.

The Political Science Seminar Series is convened by Desmond King. For more information on this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact politics.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.