Extreme Weather Events and the Support for Democracy

A growing body of evidence suggests that voters systematically punish incumbents for adverse exogenous shocks, even when these shocks are beyond the government’s control (e.g., Wolfers, 2002; Leigh, 2009; Healy et al., 2010; Achen and Bartels, 2012, 2017). However, while much of this literature focuses on individual leaders, less is known about whether such shocks also shape broader preferences for political systems. Do citizens revise their support for democracy in response to external hardships, such as droughts? Despite the vast literature on democratic preferences, this question has, to the best of my knowledge, not been systematically explored. This study addresses these issues through a phone survey with an embedded information experiment in Zambia, a country that experienced a major drought in 2024.