Trial by Fire: A Natural Disaster’s Impact on Support for the Authorities in Rural Russia

This study aims to explore the micro-foundations of political support under a non-democratic regime by investigating the impact of a natural disaster on attitudes toward the government. The research exploits the enormous wildfires that occurred in rural Russia during the summer of 2010 as a natural experiment. We test the effects of fires with a survey of almost 800 respondents in 70 randomly selected villages. Our study finds that in the burned villages there is higher support for the government at all levels. Most counterintuitively, the rise of support for authorities cannot be fully explained by the generous governmental aid. We interpret the results by the demonstration effect of the government’s performance.

Keywords: government support, natural disasters, authoritarianism, natural experiment

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Lazarev, Egor and Sobolev, Anton and Soboleva, Irina V. and Sokolov, Boris, Trial by Fire: A Natural Disaster’s Impact on Support for the Authorities in Rural Russia (April 30, 2012). Forthcoming in World Politics, Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. BRP 04/PS/2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2011975 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2011975