After the Storm - Climate Disasters and Government Response

Once a climate disaster strikes, a state manages the immediate aftermath as well as the long process of large-scale recovery and rehabilitation. Political science studies of disasters are mostly limited to analyzing politicians and voters in the immediate emergency period or the next elections after a disaster. I study disasters from a different perspective to ask: How does government functioning evolve over the long term after a natural disaster? I draw on accountability and disaster studies that suggest that politicians respond positively to pressure, to derive an original hypothesis: local government exhibits a lasting increase in performance level in response to dealing with a climate disaster. My theory holds that occurrence of a disaster leads to the politicians facing a sustained increase in pressure from citizens to perform. This increase in pressure leads to rise in political responsiveness and long-lasting improvement in government output levels. I assess this hypothesis using the case of India - a middle-income democratic country. I use interrupted time series approach to analyze government performance data and find results that support the core hypothesis. I further assess the underlying mechanism and micro foundations that build this hypothesis – using qualitative and quantitative data analysis at the local bureaucrat level across three states. I interview local bureaucrats in Kerala and survey village level bureaucrats in two states (Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh) with varying level of disaster frequency to assess the underpinnings of the proposed hypothesis.