UC Berkeley

Against the backdrop of accelerating economic divergence across different regions in advanced economies, political scientists are increasingly interested in its implication on political behavior and public opinion. This dissertation presents three papers that show how local-level implementation of policies and local economic circumstances affect voters' behavior. The first paper, titled "Biting the Hands that Feed Them? Place-Based Policies and Decline of Local Support", analyzed if place-based policies such as infrastructure projects and business support can garner political support in the area, using the EU funding data in the UK. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the findings suggest that relatively educated, well-off voters who pay attention to local affairs turn against the government that provides such programs and become more interested in the budgeting process. Visible and high-profile projects appear to be particularly counterproductive. This goes against the positive findings in the literature about cash transfer or disaster relief, but it is important to remind that very few cases of such place-based intervention have been successful in the context of deflationary spirals in the declining regions. Despite questionable track record in terms of economic impact, such measures are often used to \qq{appease} the voters in economically declining areas; this paper questions its political value of such a project.

The second paper, titled "Gone with the Dirty Air? Closure of Polluting Plants, Fracking Sites, and Changes in Local Public Opinion", deal with the impact of the factory closure and fracking ban on the political behavior of the residents in the affected areas in the UK. It turned out that such events are not associated with a strong emotional response against environmentalism, but they evaluated the government according to their economic interest. Homeowners and blue-collar workers in oil-producing areas disapproved of the government after the fracking ban, while homeowners and self-employed people in industrial areas temporarily evaluate the government highly after the shut down of factories, presumably because of the immediate governmental support for the community following the economic malaise. This chapter disputes the prevalent view that unemployment in formerly industrialized areas is creating political backlash and populism surge. It appears that voters' evaluation of the government is economically rational, and there is no indication of emotional backlash or misattribution of responsibilities.

The third paper, "Paper 3: Choosing Voters? Partisan Sorting of Voters following Close Municipal Elections in France." deals with the geographic sorting of voters in France, and the findings suggest that people do change their locations in response to local-level politics and policies. While the paper's main focus is sorting according to mayors' partisanship, the fact that people appear to be responsive to tax rates differentials may make policy-induced migration more effective. As economists generally support migration from declining areas to prospering areas, the political factor to hinder or accelerate such domestic migration would be an essential topic, and this paper suggests the electoral motivation of the subnational leaders to influence the migration flow.

The crucial common ground of the three papers, in addition to the topic, is that the findings are not in line with the conventional wisdom in the relevant academic fields. Place-based policies are often assumed to garner support in the area, factory closure is associated with anger and political populism, and policy-induced sorting was thought to be insignificant. With rigorous empirical design and careful treatment of the data, this dissertation claims that the literature in political science and urban economics has not found an answer to the critical geographic question today. It calls for further research in how changing economic geography interacts with the political landscape today.