PhD Seminar - Nicolas Cerkez (UCL)

Abstract: Two of the most important global challenges are climate change and the erosion of democratic norms. This paper studies how exposure to extreme weather events, such as droughts, affects the support for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that is highly susceptible to climate change and where democratic norms are not firmly entrenched. To do this, I combine Afrobarometer data from 2002 to 2015 on the support for democracy for 129,002 individuals across 16 countries with granular weather data from 1960 to 2015 across 27km x 27km grid cells. I find that exposure to a drought reduces the support for democracy by 3 to 7 percent. This relationship does not vary by a variety of individual characteristics, such as the respondent’s income, employment status, or age. I then study the role of individual exposure to development projects that are either financed by technocrats (World Bank) or autocrats (China) in driving this relationship. I find that the impact of droughts on the support for democracy is larger (6 to 16 percent) for individuals exposed to non-democratic alternatives. For those not exposed to such alternatives, this impact disappears. My findings shed light on the political costs of climate change in developing countries.

Location: G26 Drayton House