The Politics of Remote Resentments: Electoral Impacts of Unequal Public Infrastructure Expansion.

Can public goods expansion generate electoral backlash against incumbents? Do voters hold incumbents accountable for policies from which they derive no direct benefit? Place-based resentment, driven by perceptions of neglect and unfair treatment, has fueled political discontent in regions perceived as left behind. A central aspect of this grievance is public services deprivation. Conventional accountability models suggest that public goods provision rewards incumbents, yet the dynamics through which grievances translate into punishment remain both theoretically underdeveloped and empirically underexplored. Although evidence links underprovision to rising far-right vote shares, this may reflect only the endpoint of a more intricate process. This paper explores how unequal public goods expansion can also provoke voter backlash in remote areas unaffected by new developments. First, using a novel dataset on hospital construction in Spain (2002–2019) and municipality-level electoral results, I analyze how the allocation of 81 new hospitals resulted in a) rewards from direct winners of this policy, but b) backlash against incumbents, driven by a sense of territorial competition in already underserved areas far from these new facilities. Then, to establish a causal link, I focus on an Andalusian 2000 plan that aimed to ensure that 99\% of residents lived within 30 minutes of a hospital. Employing census-track data in Andalusia (2000-2024) in an IV strategy, I evaluate how the proposed hospital placements generated uneven patterns of electoral rewards and punishments. This study provides insights into nuanced electoral dynamics around public goods, emphasizing the critical role of unequal allocations in shaping electoral accountability.