papers

[Available upon request]

Can public goods expansion generate electoral backlash against incumbents? Do voters hold incumbents accountable for policies from which they derive no direct benefit? Conventional accountability models suggest that public goods provision rewards incumbents, yet the dynamics through which grievances translate into punishment remain both theoretically underdeveloped and empirically underexplored. This paper explores how infrastructure construction can provoke voter backlash in areas unaffected by new developments. Infrastructure provision has inherent characteristics that create particular scenarios for accountability. The visibility and salience of infrastructure, coupled with its differentiated, non-universal spatial impacts and slow expansion, set the stage for territorial competition across constituencies. When policymakers decide the location of new facilities, non-winners are confronted with a tangible counterfactual: the opportunity to enhance their own situation. The perception of having missed a chance to benefit—rather than material loss per se—is at the core of their grievance and becomes the main motivation to punish the competent incumbent. Using a novel dataset on hospital construction in Spain (2002–2019) and municipality-level electoral results, I analyze how the allocation of 81 new hospitals resulted in a) rewards from direct winners of this policy, but b) backlash against incumbents, driven by a sense of missed opportunity. This study provides insights into nuanced electoral dynamics around public goods, emphasizing the critical role of unequal allocations in shaping electoral accountability.

[Soon to be available]

Can public goods expansion generate electoral backlash against incumbents? Conventional accountability models suggest that public goods provision typically yields electoral rewards. Yet public goods expansion can also prompt punishment from individuals who do not directly benefit, a possibility that remains theoretically and empirically understudied. We argue that non-beneficiaries of public goods expansion, even in the absence of direct material losses, may perceive a missed opportunity to improve their own situation, generating grievances that translate into electoral punishment. We test this argument with a survey experiment in Andalusia (Spain) that leverages geocoded data on the distribution of general hospitals. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of three conditions: informed about a new hospital with no location specified, described as policy winners (the new hospital is closer), or described as policy non-winners (the new hospital is farther away).

[Soon to be available]

Do green projects inevitably result in electoral backlash? Under what circumstances can politicians mitigate these costs or even transform them into electoral rewards? As an urgent response to the climate crisis, green energy infrastructure projects are essential for reducing dependence on polluting resources. However, these projects are often seen as disruptive and evoke NIMBY reactions due to their unique cost-benefit distribution. Unlike public goods, which typically provide localized benefits while spreading costs broadly through taxation, green energy infrastructure imposes concentrated local costs while offering widely diffused environmental benefits. This paper takes a step back and reassess the narrative around green infrastructure by exploring the contexts in which they generate benefits or grievances for residents, highlighting how these dynamics mediate electoral consequences. While the psychological costs of such projects may spark place-based resentment, particularly in rural areas where identity and autonomy feel threatened, local economic and political conditions can reshape perceptions. Direct economic benefits, such as land sales or construction opportunities in declining areas, may offset grievances. Simultaneously, forward-looking local politicians can leverage increased budgets from these projects to implement compensatory policies, mitigating discontent. These effects, unfolding over different time horizons, significantly shape how citizens perceive green projects and their support for incumbents. Using a novel dataset on wind and solar park construction in Catalonia (2000–2024) and precinct-level electoral results, this paper analyzes the localized impacts of these projects. It examines whether incumbents face electoral losses in affected areas but gain support elsewhere, with differential responses between rural deprived and more economically vibrant areas. By employing causal inference methods, the study stresses the importance of understanding how green projects interact with socio-economic and political contexts, offering critical insights into the electoral dynamics of sustainability transitions.

[Available upon request]

In recent years, urban governments across Europe have increasingly implemented restrictions on car mobility in dense city centers, often justified on environmental grounds. Policies such as Low Emission Zones (LEZs) or pedestrianization initiatives aim not only to reduce pollution but also to improve overall quality of life. While prior research shows that such policies often generate local opposition or fail to yield electoral gains for implementing governments, we know less about how the costs and benefits of these measures are spatially distributed. Furthermore, although frequently framed through an environmental lens, these mobility policies predate the politicization of climate change and are promoted by a broader spectrum of political parties than typically assumed. This paper examines the political consequences of two mobility restriction policies introduced in Madrid under very different ideological contexts. First, we analyze the 2002 implementation of the Regulated Parking Zone (Servicio de Estacionamiento Regulado, SER) by the conservative Partido Popular, in power from 1989 to 2015. Second, we assess the 2018 introduction of Madrid Central, a far more restrictive policy enacted by the leftist municipal government of Ahora Madrid (2015–2019). While the SER zones aimed to reduce car presence by limiting parking to residents but permitting circulation, Madrid Central prohibited non-resident vehicles from entering the zone entirely. We interpret these two cases as representing a broader ideological cleavage in green policymaking: disincentivization (center-right) versus prohibition (left), each eliciting different levels and patterns of citizen opposition. Using a novel fine-grained data set (census tract-level, the most disaggregated administrative unit in the Spanish administration), we rely on causal techniques such as TWFE, DiD, and RDD. We find that while both policies generated local electoral backlash, opposition was significantly higher against Madrid Central. However, this opposition is not evenly distributed: residents living just outside the restricted zones, who experience spillover effects without direct benefits, are the most penalizing. In contrast, residents within the restricted zones, who enjoy improved local conditions, tend to reward the incumbent government. These findings highlight the importance of spatially disaggregated analysis in understanding the electoral consequences of urban environmental policies.

[Soon to be available]

This methodological paper builds the most granular measure of public-service accessibility to date for Andalusia (Spain). Combining postal addresses, 250-metre population grid cells, and the location of general hospitals, I use the Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) to compute car travel times and distances from each populated address to its nearest facility. Aggregating these door-to-door estimates yields a population-weighted distribution of objective accessibility, replicable to other services and regions and validated against alternative measures.