RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Politics Matter: How Political Experience Mitigates Learning Losses Caused by Natural Disasters JF RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences FD Russell Sage Foundation SP 181 OP 204 DO 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.1.08 VO 10 IS 1 A1 Alcaino, Manuel A1 Argote, Pablo YR 2024 UL http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/10/1/181.abstract AB Growing evidence warns about the detrimental effects of the stress induced by natural disasters on learning outcomes. Yet less is known about how political leadership could mitigate the adverse exposure to these events. Exploiting a natural experiment—the massive 2010 earthquake in Chile—as an exogenous shock and using fine-grained student data, we find that school disruption has a short and long-term impact on students’ test scores. Moreover, our results indicate that learning losses were more pronounced in municipalities with a first-term mayor, in contrast to a nonsignificant effect in municipalities with a reelected one. We show that one of the pathways accounting for these effects is the ability of experienced bureaucrats to mobilize educational resources, highlighting the relevance of managerial capacities in times of crisis.