Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

uu.sePublications from Uppsala University
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Natural Disasters and National Election: On the 2004 Indian Ocean Boxing Day Tsunami, the 2005 Storm Gudrun and the 2006 Historic Regime Shift
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Government. Handledare. (Center for Natural Disaster Science (CNDS))
2017 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The 2006 Swedish parliamentary election was a historic election with the largest bloc transfer of voters in Swedish history. The 2002-2006 incumbent Social Democratic Party (S) received its lowest voter support since 1914 as roughly 150,000, or 8%, of the 2002 S voters went to the main opposition, the conservative Moderate Party (M). This became the most decisive factor in ousting S from power after 12 years of rule. As a result, the M-led Alliance (A) with the People's Party (FP), the Center Party (C), and the Christian Democrats (KD) won the election. Natural Disasters and National Election makes the novel contribution of proposing two natural disasters, the Indian Ocean’s 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and 2005 Storm Gudrun (Erwin), which struck only two weeks following the tsunami, as major events that impacted government popularity in the 2006 election and contributed to the redistribution of voter support, within and across party-blocs. The core findings from this thesis show that the S government’s poor crisis response to Gudrun, which is the hitherto most costly natural disaster in Swedish history, alone has an estimated effect of a magnitude that likely contributed to the 2006 historic regime shift, while the tsunami also seems to have mattered. The tsunami is particularly interesting, as S’s poor international crisis response to the event constitutes the first natural disaster situation to knowingly have affected an election on the other side of the planet. Moreover, to some degree voters recognized the active opposition by C as effective representation and rewarded the party for its strong stance on the poor handling of both events by S. In fact, the active voice of C concerning these disasters likely helped move the party from the periphery of party politics to becoming the third-largest party in Swedish politics. In sum, this research investigates accountability and effective party representation via retrospective voting, which is an essential mechanism for the legitimacy of democracy. Findings suggest that the average Swedish voter indeed may be voting retrospectively to hold publically elected officials accountable, which suggest a healthy status of the retrospective voting mechanism and Swedish democracy.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017. , p. 71
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Social Sciences, ISSN 1652-9030 ; 136
Keywords [en]
accountability, retrospective voting, party support, regime shift, natural disasters, crisis response, international crisis response, international law, effective representation, multiparty systems
National Category
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-314534ISBN: 978-91-554-9813-9 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-314534DiVA, id: diva2:1071124
Public defence
2017-05-20, Sal 3576, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Gamla torget 6, Uppsala, 13:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2017-04-25 Created: 2017-02-06 Last updated: 2021-05-12
List of papers
1. Winds of Change: Voter Blame and Storm Gudrun in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Winds of Change: Voter Blame and Storm Gudrun in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election
2016 (English)In: Electoral Studies, ISSN 0261-3794, E-ISSN 1873-6890, Vol. 41, p. 129-142Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Can a natural disaster shift long-standing party support for the long-term? Studies of political behavior indicate that, as elections approach, voters punish or credit governments based on their responses to severe weather phenomena. It may still be considered an open question, however, if poor crisis response could trigger more durable shifts in long-standing party support. I provide empirical evidence suggesting that it could. I exploit a crucial case for the study of change in party support, Storm Gudrun (Erwin), to examine long lasting punishment effects over crisis response. The estimated effect is of a magnitude that equals the largest block-transfer of voters in Swedish history and can be seen over three parliamentary elections (2006, 2010 and 2014). 

Keywords
Retrospective voting, Natural disasters Accountability, Party support, Regime shift, Crisis response
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-271204 (URN)10.1016/j.electstud.2015.12.003 (DOI)000372692300012 ()
Projects
CNDS, PhD Dissertation
Available from: 2016-01-07 Created: 2016-01-07 Last updated: 2021-01-19Bibliographically approved
2. When legitimacy drowned: waves of blame in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election
Open this publication in new window or tab >>When legitimacy drowned: waves of blame in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election
2024 (English)In: Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, ISSN 1745-7289, E-ISSN 1745-7297Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

Can a government be held accountable for a natural disaster on the other side of the planet? Research on political behavior shows that a government’s crisis response to a natural disaster is subject for citizen evaluation by the ballot. Though, thus far such findings are limited to national events. In this study, the geospatial coverage of such retrospective voting is tested. More specifically, I exploit the Swedish government’s poor international crisis response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Boxing Day Tsunami, to make a case for cross-border retrospection in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election. As the tsunami struck where many Swedes were vacationing, the results of this case demonstrate that voter evaluation of a government’s crisis response to natural phenomena is a process that cuts across the border of states. In fact, such evaluations may involve how a government responds to a natural disaster, affecting its civilian population vacationing abroad, way outside of its national jurisdiction. In a meaningful way, then, the findings presented here suggest the expansion of voter accountability beyond the borders of the nation state due to increased citizen mobility in an era of globalization.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2024
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-314530 (URN)10.1080/17457289.2024.2395353 (DOI)001312584000001 ()
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2021-06355
Available from: 2017-02-03 Created: 2017-02-03 Last updated: 2024-11-05
3. Waves of Blame and Winds of Change: Challengers, Effective Representation and Electoral Accountability in Response to Parallel Crises
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Waves of Blame and Winds of Change: Challengers, Effective Representation and Electoral Accountability in Response to Parallel Crises
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
National Category
Political Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-314532 (URN)
Available from: 2017-02-03 Created: 2017-02-03 Last updated: 2017-02-03

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(779 kB)6308 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 779 kBChecksum SHA-512
d8baec6cd3c2d627d1092b299cff377288a906011d4fdf046d0f3c35a85009a6ff84b3583a0abde0ad87bd1222111d49be74f2bed11d446063f2ce9f02419249
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Eriksson, Lina M.
By organisation
Department of Government
Political Science

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 6310 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 3616 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf