The Politics of Natural Disasters
Cyclone Gudrun (Erwin) hits the North Sea in 2005.
Can poor crisis response in the face of a natural disaster shift long-standing party support for the long-term? According to research by Lina Erikkson, it can.
Eriksson, The Europe Center's Visiting Student Researcher, is a Fulbright Scholar who is visiting Stanford from Uppsala University and the Center for Natural Disaster Science in Sweden. In her dissertation, Natural Disasters and National Politics, she examines the electoral effects of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and the 2005 Storm Gudrun on Swedish parliamentary elections.
Through empircal reserach, Erikkson finds that the Swedish Social Democratic Party's poor crisis response to Storm Gudrun resulted in a significant decrease in support for the Social Democratic Party in the affected regions, leading to the largest change in partisan support in Swedish history.
Lina holds an M.A. in Ethnic Conflicts and Conflict Resolutions, Asylum Immigration and Integration from University of Waterloo, Canada and an M.Sc. in Political Sciences, Economics and International Development from Jönköping International Business School in Sweden.
Read more about Erikkson's research at http://stanford.io/1oFgsXn.