[Data Analysis]

Abstract: How does exposure to natural disasters shape citizen-state relations? Although disasters can erode political trust and undermine civic engagement, they also create incentives and opportunities for citizens to make new demands on states and for states to recalibrate their administrative practices. Drawing on an original face-to-face survey of over 2,000 households, 18 focus groups, and 75 in-depth interviews with citizens, community workers, and local government officials in Bihar and Gujarat, this project examines how climate risk intersects with household political strategies to shape accountability mechanisms in contexts marked by weak formal institutions, such as urban slums and remote villages. Our quantitative analysis indicates that disaster exposure increases the likelihood of collective action: households more acutely affected by slow-onset disasters such as agricultural stress and recurrent floods are significantly more inclined to participate in protests and attend community meetings compared to those less affected. These associations remain robust across multiple model specifications, including household and individual-level controls for socioeconomic status, ethnic identity, and migration incidence, as well as unobserved differences in local political and institutional conditions. Using evidence from focus groups and interviews, we further demonstrate that disasters can reveal to states their own capacity deficits, encouraging local governments to invest in building institutional capacities across a range of administrative and policy domains.