Impact of Floods on Local Political Representation

Natural disasters have significant material and social impacts on the communities affected. It may also influence the result of the political process, especially at the local level. Therefore, the paper investigates the political consequences of the disastrous floods in the Czech Republic with the focus on the largest floods in 2002. Its main goal is to test the hypothesis that floods in the Czech Republic influenced the results of local elections, i.e. that floods caused changes in local representations of those municipalities, which were affected by floods just before the local elections. The hypothesis was formulated on the basis of the current distribution of responsibility in the Czech system of flood protection (responsibility is shared by citizens, local governments and the national government). There have been used data concerning the elections at the local level held in November 2002 and data on flood damages. The data sample included not only those municipalities affected by floods, but also those which weren’t affected. It enabled to verify the plausibility of the results. The statistical analysis shows that there was no statistically significant influence of floods on re-election of candidates standing for their offices again. There was a moderate influence on the participation of the electorate in the elections