Disaster Aid and Local Distributive Politics: Drought in Northeast Brazil

• In Event: The Changing Landscape of Aid: Conflict, Natural Disasters and New Donors

Abstract

Most work on disaster politics focuses on international or national levels of government, but the distribution of disaster aid both shapes and is shaped by local political relationships. Governments and aid agencies often partner with NGOs, especially local community or neighborhood associations, to implement aid programs. However, disaster aid is in high demand, and there is rarely enough to meet local needs. In my theory of “trading favors,” I argue that neighborhood associations help citizens to trade their collective votes for preferential access to public services such as disaster aid, since politicians monitor the aggregate votes of these neighborhoods at polling stations. I hypothesize that politicians are more likely to target disaster aid to neighborhoods that gave their bloc vote in previous elections, and neighborhoods receiving aid are more likely to concentrate their vote in the future. In this paper, I focus on the long-term natural disaster of drought, as more than half of the world’s poor live in drought-prone areas. Water access is often used as a political tool, and politicians can target drought aid to specific groups over others for political advantage. I test my hypotheses with geocoded data of precinct-level voting and the distribution of rainwater cisterns for drought aid by the Brazilian government in partnership with international/domestic NGOs and primarily implemented by neighborhood associations. This paper has important implications for our understanding of the impacts of disaster aid on local distributive politics and collective action and considerations for future aid distribution programs.

Author

• Alicia Dailey Cooperman, Princeton University