How Natural Disaster Shocks Authoritarian Leviathan Political Order

• In Event: Poster Session: Perspectives on Political Economy

Abstract

This research paper adopts the differ-in-differ strategy to explore the causal effects of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake on Chinese local authoritarian political order— fluctuations of municipal government sizes. By conducting the analysis with cross-sectional time series data, we find that political connections, personal characteristics, and local elites’ patron-clientelism are nullified when the central government mobilizes all resources to address the challenge in the face of exogenous natural disasters. This argument debates with the traditional interpretations of political connections and co-optations in authoritarian political rule. Moreover, we discover the mechanism behind the dynamics between government sizes and natural disasters. The marginal effects show that the earthquake makes governments tolerate higher deficits to meet the financial demands in reconstructions therefore expanding the government. The earthquake brought higher municipal loans—developing the market economy and thus the government sizes shrink. China's local GDP and revenues remain increasing despite the damage of the earthquake indicating its state capacity to recover economics from shocks. Specifically, economic factors’ effect remain robust across models---municipal loans and GDP growth have negative influences in contrast to that local deficit and revenue growth have positive effects though the latter one is quite trivial.

Author

• Gary Ziwen Zu, Duke University