Responding to Catastrophe

Abstract

Natural disasters often cause significant human suffering. They may also provide incentives for states to escalate repression against their citizens. We argue that state authorities escalate repression in the wake of natural disasters because the combination of increased grievances and declining state control produced by disasters creates windows of opportunity for dissident mobilization and challenges to state authority. We also investigate the impact of the post-disaster humanitarian aid on this relationship. Specifically, we argue that inflows of aid in the immediate aftermath of disasters are likely to dampen the impact of disasters on repression. However, we expect that this effect is greater when aid flows to more democratic states. We examine these interrelated hypotheses using cross-national data on immediate-onset natural disasters and state violations of physical integrity rights between 1977 and 2009 as well as newly collected foreign aid data disaggregated by sector. The results provide support for both our general argument and the corollary hypotheses.

Silver Lining to Extreme Weather Events? Democracy and Climate Change Mitigation

“…Borick and Rabe (2010) and Konisky et al (2016) note that public perceptions of climate change are considerably localized: the more people are affected, the greater would be its influence among the general population and policy makers. Similarly to Bergholt and Lujala (2012) and Wood and Wright (2016), I use EM-DAT's estimates of the number of people affected by extreme weather events (Affected) per year to account for the variation in the severity of climate-related disasters and not simply their incidence. This is a useful measure since my study is focused on events that are more likely to initiate public discourse on climate change and lead to meaningful policy change (Moore et al 2019).…”

Recovering the status quo: tipping points and earthquake aftermaths in colonial India

“…The use of repression in response to nationalist criticisms of colonial earthquake management was not surprising. Wood and Wright (2016) have shown that authoritarian regimes, a descriptor which fits colonial India, tend towards stepping up repression following disasters. Across the empire, British colonial authorities routinely suppressed dissent through coercive laws and direct force (Dwyer and Nettelbeck, 2018).…”

Computational Social Science of Disasters: Opportunities and Challenges

“…Others studied more basic dynamics behind conflict behaviors. In this respect, studying the repression dynamics following rapid-onset natural disasters, researchers showed that repression is likely to increase after a disaster, but inflows of aid reduce its intensity [80].…”