When legitimacy drowned: waves of blame in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election*

Can a government be held accountable for a natural disaster on the other side of the planet? Research on political behavior shows that a government’s crisis response to a natural disaster is subject for citizen evaluation by the ballot. Though, thus far such findings are limited to national events. In this study, the geospatial coverage of such retrospective voting is tested. More specifically, I exploit the Swedish government’s poor international crisis response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Boxing Day Tsunami, to make a case for cross-border retrospection in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election. As the tsunami struck where many Swedes were vacationing, the results of this case demonstrate that voter evaluation of a government’s crisis response to natural phenomena is a process that cuts across the border of states. In fact, such evaluations may involve how a government responds to a natural disaster, affecting its civilian population vacationing abroad, way outside of its national jurisdiction. In a meaningful way, then, the findings presented here suggest the expansion of voter accountability beyond the borders of the nation state due to increased citizen mobility in an era of globalization.