Do Natural Disasters Distract the Public Enough for Politicians to Favor Special Interests?

The research investigates whether natural disasters reduce public attention to politics, enabling legislators to favor special-interest donors. Using machine learning to track political news coverage and analyzing congressional votes from 2005-2017, the study examines how attention shifts following 200 major U.S. disasters. Findings show that within three days of a disaster, House members were about 6 percentage points more likely to vote in line with their largest special-interest donors. This effect coincided with a 7% drop in political news coverage. The results suggest that decreased scrutiny allows politicians to support donor interests more readily, raising concerns about electoral accountability.

Full Citation and Link to Article

Kaplan, Ethan, Jörg L. Spenkuch, and Haishan Yuan. "Pandering in the Shadows: How Natural Disasters Affect Special Interest Politics." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (Forthcoming).​ https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fpol.20230783

Extended Summary

Central Research Question

This study examines whether natural disasters divert public attention from political processes, allowing legislators to align their votes more closely with special-interest donors. The authors explore the hypothesis that when the public is distracted by a disaster, politicians may be less accountable to voters and more responsive to donors who contribute to their campaigns. Specifically, the research investigates whether House of Representatives members become more likely to vote in line with their special-interest donors immediately following a natural disaster.

Previous Literature

The study builds on prior research examining the role of media and public scrutiny in shaping political behavior. Existing literature suggests that increased media coverage of politics enhances electoral accountability. For example, studies have found that news exposure influences government spending, electoral outcomes, and policy decisions. Stromberg (2004) demonstrated that the introduction of radio significantly increased government transfers during the New Deal era, while Eisensee and Stromberg (2007) showed that U.S. foreign aid to disaster-stricken countries depended on media coverage of the events.

Research also indicates that political leaders strategically time controversial actions to avoid scrutiny. Durante and Zhuravskaya (2018) found that the Israeli government was more likely to launch attacks on Palestinians when other major news events dominated the media cycle. Similarly, Djourelova and Durante (2021) showed that U.S. presidents time the release of controversial executive orders to coincide with news distractions.

While much of the previous literature has focused on the executive branch, this study contributes to a relatively underexplored area—how legislative behavior is influenced by shifts in public attention. Snyder and Stromberg (2010) found that congresspeople whose districts receive more media coverage are less likely to follow party lines and more engaged in congressional hearings. However, limited research has quantitatively assessed whether public distractions, such as natural disasters, directly influence legislators’ voting behavior in favor of special interests.

Data

The authors use a combination of novel and existing datasets to measure both public attention and congressional behavior. The primary dataset comes from MapLight, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks money in politics. This dataset includes records of campaign donations from special-interest groups to individual legislators, as well as these groups’ stated positions on congressional bills. The authors focus on 1,525 bills voted on between 2005 and 2017, where at least one interest group publicly took a position.

To measure public attention, the authors use:

1. Television News Coverage: They analyze daily abstracts from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (VTNA) to track political content on major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox).

2. Newspaper Mentions: The study uses NewsLibrary to track how frequently individual congresspeople are mentioned in local newspapers.

3. Google Searches: They analyze search volume for politics-related terms (e.g., “Congress,” “government”) as well as disaster-related terms (e.g., “earthquake,” “hurricane”) to gauge shifts in public interest.

   
   

For natural disasters, the authors use the EM-DAT database from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). They limit their sample to 200 major U.S. disasters between 2005 and 2017, selecting events in the top tercile of severity in terms of deaths, affected individuals, or financial damage.

Methods

To test their hypothesis, the authors use a quasi-experimental approach, leveraging the random timing of natural disasters as an exogenous shock to public attention. The core empirical strategy involves event studies and difference-in-differences models, which compare congressional voting behavior before and after disasters.

1. Measuring Political Distraction: Using machine learning, the authors classify news segments as political or non-political based on content summaries. They track changes in the share of airtime devoted to political news before and after disasters to establish whether media coverage shifts significantly.

2. Identifying Changes in Congressional Voting: They examine how often legislators vote in line with their special-interest donors. A legislator is classified as supporting special interests if they vote “yea” on a bill when the majority of their campaign contributions come from interest groups supporting the bill, or vote “nay” when most of their donor money comes from opposing groups.

3. Randomization Inference: To validate their findings, the authors conduct placebo tests by randomly assigning disaster dates and measuring whether the observed effects could arise by chance.

4. Controlling for Alternative Explanations: They rule out competing hypotheses such as strategic bill scheduling, economic damage from disasters, and party pressure by testing whether legislative activity, speech content, or procedural rules change in response to disasters.

   
   

Findings/Size Effects

The results show a strong relationship between natural disasters and increased support for special interests among legislators.

1. Shift Toward Special Interests: In the three days following a disaster, House members were about 6 percentage points more likely to vote in line with their largest special-interest donors compared to the three days before the disaster. This increase is statistically significant and represents a notable shift from the baseline 81% alignment rate.

2. Reduced Political News Coverage: On days following disasters, the share of political news on major networks dropped by 7%, suggesting that media attention was diverted.

3. Decline in Public Political Interest: Google search volume for political terms decreased significantly in the days after a disaster, while searches for disaster-related terms spiked.

4. Event-Study Evidence: The impact of disasters on legislator behavior lasted for about three days and then dissipated, mirroring the temporary shift in media coverage and public attention.

5. Robustness Checks: The results remain consistent when controlling for seasonality, day-of-the-week effects, and legislator-specific characteristics. The study finds no evidence that the legislative agenda changes significantly after disasters, ruling out strategic bill scheduling as a confounding factor.

   
   

Conclusion

The findings suggest that public attention plays a crucial role in maintaining electoral accountability. When the public and media are distracted by external events, such as natural disasters, legislators become significantly more likely to vote in alignment with their special-interest donors. This provides empirical evidence that transparency and disclosure requirements alone may not be sufficient to ensure political accountability—continuous public and media scrutiny are essential.

This research contributes to broader discussions on political accountability, media influence, and the role of special interests in policymaking. The findings highlight the potential for politicians to exploit moments of public distraction to advance donor-driven agendas. Future research could explore whether similar effects occur during other large-scale news events, such as mass shootings or international crises, further examining how shifts in public attention influence democratic accountability.