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This dissertation contributes to the literature on the nexus between climate-related disaster and conflict. One of the main sources of uncertainty regarding the effects of climate change on conflict stems from limited understanding of the driving mechanisms and the political contexts under which these effects materialize. People respond to climate variability through a variety of coping mechanisms that, in turn, determine social outcomes. Yet, these remain little understood. Addressing this overarching issue, the first part of the dissertation (Paper I and II) studies the conditions and possible pathways through which climate events shape conflict-related outcomes. Paper I studies the role of local state institutions in mitigating adverse effects of flooding on communal conflict risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. Statistical evidence shows that areas experiencing flood disaster are more likely to experience communal violence in a context where citizens distrust the local state institutions. Paper II examines the mediating effect of migration as a transitional pathway, connecting natural hazards and social unrest in urban areas of Bangladesh. It finds that although natural hazards shape migratory decisions, this climate-related mobility does not affect the likelihood of protests in host communities. The last two essays of the dissertation study responses to climate-related disasters taking place in contexts of ongoing armed conflicts, and focus on household-level compound effects of these two calamities. Using interpretative machine learning methods, Paper III explores distress-related mobility as an outcome of interest. We show that compound effects can manifest differently in the same communities, since a significant amount of variation exists in the mobility patterns of people affected by the same event. Paper IV focuses on how state response to natural-hazard-related disasters and conflicts jointly affect levels of political trust in Pakistan. The evidence suggests that

In 2017 alone, an estimated 68,851 people lost their lives as a consequence of civil wars, that is, armed conflicts that take place within the borders of a state. Such violent conflicts not only lead to immense human suffering, but also leave social, economic and political imprints on the societies that experience them. This dissertation contributes to a burgeoning literature that seeks to understand these imprints by studying how local conflict dynamics affect two specific outcomes: institutional trust and postwar crime. It comprises four independent essays that pose separate research questions, but taken together make important contributions to our understanding of how subnational particularities related to conflict intensity, armed actors and the type of violence employed determine whether, how and why civil wars affect the outcomes of interest. Essay I finds that a large-scale insurgent attack on civilians led to an immediate increase in individual-level trust in state institutions in Kabul City. Essay II finds that conflict intensity at the local level in Afghanistan has a negative impact on individual-level perceptions of one specific state institution: the police. Essay III finds that the more an area in Northern Ireland was affected by wartime violence, the more crime it displayed in the postwar context, but that this effect is contingent on the actor perpetrating violence. Finally, Essay IV shows how conflict dynamics in a former insurgent stronghold of Northern Ireland (West Belfast) changed the style of policing at the local level, as well as the consequences this had for the police’s ability to enforce law and order in the postwar context. These findings speak to an emerging research agenda that studies the conditions under which civil wars function either as forces of destruction or as catalysts for societal development, and offer three larger conclusions: conflict dynamics shape the relationship between local populations and the state far into the post