Abstract:  When households rely on migration to cope with economic uncertainty, what happens to the politicians who represent them? Internal migration redistributes populations from rural hinterlands to urban centers, yet little is known about the political consequences of these demographic shifts for out-migration areas. How do local politicians respond when a large segment of the rural electorate moves to the city? Prominent scholarship in political economy suggests that political leaders face fewer pressures to perform when their constituents can self-insure through private coping mechanisms such as migration. As households exit rather than voice dissatisfaction, elected officials have fewer electoral incentives to deliver, reducing the provision of services to those who remain. I test this argument in India, a country that is home to an estimated 100 million internal economic migrants. Using village-level panel data from India's long running Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (REDS), I show that villages experiencing higher out-migration flows due to adverse shocks experience significant declines in the provision of local public goods and the institutional performance of gram sabhas, India's grassroots deliberative assemblies. These findings underscore how out-migration can undermine democratic governance and political accountability in left-behind regions.