Economic Shocks and Civic Engagement : Evidence from the 2010-11 Pakistani Floods ∗

How countries transition from autocracy to democracy is a key question in both economics and political science. A number of recent studies have found a positive relationship between natural disasters and political liberalization, interpreting these correlations as support for theoretical models which posit that lowered opportunity costs for rebellion due to bad economic conditions incentivize the state to provide rights in equilibrium. This interpretation rests on two crucial assumptions: (1) the economic consequences of natural disasters are not strongly influenced by the state’s potentially endogenous reactions to them; and (2) there are no strong non-economic channels through which natural disasters impact political attitudes and behavior. Using evidence from the 2010-11 floods in Pakistan we show that neither assumption is sustainable in one critical case. Leveraging diverse data sources (geo-spatial measures of flooding in 2010-11 and historical flood risk, constituency-level election returns, household economic survey data, nightlight illumination data, district-level emergency relief data, and an original survey of 13,282 Pakistani households), we show that the massive 2010-11 floods had no persistent economic impact, but find that Pakistanis living in flood-affected places became significantly more politically engaged than their unaffected peers; they turned out to vote at substantially higher rates, acquired greater political knowledge, and developed more aggressive attitudes about demanding services. These results call into question the interpretation of a broad set of papers and tie into a rich literature in political economy showing that disasters can have complicated political effects beyond their economic impacts. (JEL: A12, D72, D74, I28, O17) ∗We thank Saurabh Pant for research assistance on flood relief data. Major General Saeed Aleem’s team at the National Disaster Management Authority and Umar Javeed at the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan also provided useful information on relief efforts. Amarnath Giriraj and Mark Giordano at the International Water Management Institute developed historical flood data for us. Valeria Mueller at the International Food Policy Research Institute shared survey results on migration in flood-affected areas. Seminar participants at the 2013 AALIMS Conference at Rice, the 2013 Northeast Workshop in Empirical Political Science (NEWEPS) at New York University, Duke, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and Yale all offered helpful comments and feedback. All errors are our own. This research was supported, in part, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, grant #FA9550-09-1-0314. †Assistant Professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; Email: c christine fair@yahoo.com. ‡Post-doctoral Research Associate, Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, Princeton University; E-mail: pmkuhn@princeton.edu. §Associate Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business; E-mail: Malhotra Neil@GSB.Stanford. edu. ¶Assistant Professor, Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; Email: jns@princeton.edu. Corresponding author.