Climate shocks, regional favoritism and trust in leaders: Insights from droughts in Africa

• We examine how droughts affect trust in leaders, linking climate data to African survey respondents, 2002–2018. • We report negative effects of droughts on people’s trust in their president and the effects increase with drought severity. • In line with theories of regional favoritism, droughts increase trust in leaders in leader birth regions and in capitals. • In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regions. • With extreme weathers becoming more frequent and severe, we will likely see more fluctuation in trust in political leaders. Droughts can affect people’s trust in political leaders positively, through rallying effects, or negatively, through blame attribution. We examine how drought conditions affect trust in leaders in the context of Africa. We link high-precision exogenous climate data to survey respondents, 2002–2018, and report moderate negative effects of drought conditions on people’s trust in their president. These negative effects increase with the severity of drought conditions. The political economy of favoritism, where some regions are preferentially treated by rulers, should result in heterogeneous effects across territories. We find that trust in leaders increases in capital regions and in leader birth regions during dry conditions. In contrast, when droughts take place in such regions, trust levels fall in other regions. This is in line with the idea that capital regions and leader birth regions could be preferentially treated in the aftermath of droughts. Understanding these processes further is important given their salience because of global warming.