Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0006-9567-5570

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Government

Reader 1

Professor Cesar Vargas Nunez

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

This thesis examines how the 2010 Maule earthquake reshaped municipal electoral outcomes in Chile, offering a rare opportunity to study democratic accountability under extreme institutional stress. The earthquake struck just days before a presidential transition, exposing failures in early emergency coordination under the outgoing center-left Concertación government and elevating the visibility of reconstruction efforts under the incoming center-right Piñera administration. Leveraging the earthquake’s sharp geographic variation, I employ a pre/post treated–control design comparing changes in left-bloc municipal control between 2008 and 2012 across treated regions, Maule, Biobío, and O’Higgins, and unaffected control regions. Using region-level SERVEL electoral data, I find that treated regions experienced an 8.6-percentage-point decline in left-bloc victories, while control regions remained stable, producing a difference-in-differences estimate of approximately –11 percentage points. These results indicate that citizens in the hardest-hit areas engaged in a form of retrospective voting shaped by both perceived government competence and the emotional impact of the disaster. The findings contribute to broader debates on retrospective accountability, demonstrating that natural disasters can transform political loyalties by making state capacity and leadership highly visible. Ultimately, the Maule earthquake functioned as a democratic stress test, revealing how trauma, performance, and institutional design converge to influence political behavior.

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