Assessing the risk of pre-existing grievances in non-democracies: The conditional effect of natural disasters on repression

Pfaff, Katharina Gabriela (2019) Assessing the risk of pre-existing grievances in non-democracies: The conditional effect of natural disasters on repression. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. ISSN 2212-4209

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Abstract

Every disaster carries the risk of destruction but not every disaster prompts violent political process in a country. This article examines the popular argument that natural disasters can lead to higher state violence if resulting shocks caused by a disaster add to pre-existing grievances. If economic inequality or political instability is prevalent before a disaster occurs, disasters are expected to exacerbate the perceived threat to government's survival in office. Consequently, repression is expected to be higher in the aftermath of a disaster. I test the existence of the expected conditional effect of pre-disaster stability and disasters using cross-national data on natural rapid-onset disasters in non-democracies between 1976 and 2013. As indicators for pre-existing grievances this article focuses on ex ante economic inequality and political dissent. While a natural disaster as such is not associated with a violation of human rights, empirical evidence suggests that the probability of an increase in post-disaster repression is higher when a country has previously experienced grievances.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	In Press, Corrected Proof.
Divisions:	Departments > Sozioökonomie > Soziologie u Empirische Sozialforschung
Version of the Document:	Published
Variance from Published Version:	None
Depositing User:	Katharina Gabriela Pfaff
Date Deposited:	26 Sep 2019 11:35
Last Modified:	01 Oct 2019 01:30
Related URLs:	Publisher https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/t2ngt...
FIDES Link:	https://bach.wu.ac.at/d/research/results/92140/
URI:	https://epub.wu.ac.at/id/eprint/7189

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