In 2022 Political Science Research and Methods (PSRM) Editor Paul Kellstedt empaneled an award committee comprising of Ruth Dassonneville (Chair), Laron Williams, and Sven-Oliver Proksch to decide which article among the dozens of fabulous articles in PSRM in 2021 was the very best one.
The committee is delighted to announce that the winners of 2022's "Best Paper"
award are Leonardo Baccini (McGill University) and Lucas Leeman (University of Zurich) for their
article 'Do natural disasters help the environment? How voters respond and what that means.'
The committee had the following to say about the winning article:
"In their paper, Baccini and Leemann use geospatial data on natural disasters in Switzerland that they match with referendum votes on issues related to climate change. By connecting these two data sources they find that experiencing natural disasters substantially increase support for pro-climate policies. This prize committee was impressed by the paper and identified many strong points in the paper.
"First, the authors make use of unique and rich microlevel data on natural disasters that allows geolocating exposure to floods; Second, the paper makes clever use of the Swiss context--that relies strongly on direct democracy to examine the behavioural consequences of experiencing natural disasters; Third, the paper is empirically well conducted. The authors use different methods to estimate their effect and conduct a large number of additional tests - that all shed light on the robustness of the effects, and Finally, it deals with a societally important question. While pro-climate organizations worldwide are thinking about ways to increase support for pro-climate policies, this article informs on the extent to which natural disasters can contribute to bringing about change."
This article and previous award-winning articles can be found free of charge below.