While climate adaptation has been widely viewed as a local problem, more national government strategies are also needed to achieve more favorable policies. We seek to direct attention to the impacts of national government adaptation policies on attitudes of vulnerable citizens. Specifically, we argue that responses to different forms of climate disaster, such as flooding (as opposed to drought), can more readily reduce citizens’ trust in government. Examining extreme weather victim views in Guatemala, one of the world’s most vulnerable nations, we consider differences in the impacts of flood-related extreme weather and drought-related extreme weather. Using a 2023 national survey with flood and drought over-samples, we show that flood zone respondents, especially those reporting firsthand climate impacts, have a more negative view of government adaptation performance than those suffering “slow harms” droughts which respondents did not as readily attribute to climate change.

Why are some legislators more effective than others in fragmented presidential systems? I argue that in Brazil’s fractionalized party system, legislative member organizations (LMOs) supply policy and political information that parties often lack, enabling lawmakers to advance bills. I test this claim using novel legislative effectiveness scores (LESs) for sponsors and rapporteurs in Brazil’s lower chamber. Quantitative results show that LMO affiliation is associated with higher effectiveness, but only in highly structured organizations. Public security LMOs boost both sponsorship and rapporteurship, while agribusiness LMOs increase rapporteurship effectiveness. Weakly organized LMOs show null effects. Party affiliation matters, but parties do not consistently provide information and coordination. Qualitative data identify two mechanisms by which strong LMOs operate: placing aligned members in key positions and leveraging expertise to shape agendas and voting cues. These findings recast effectiveness in Brazil as a function of cross-party informational networks rather than parties alone and identify scope conditions under which LMOs matter in other multiparty presidential democracies.

How does the form of community dissent shape public support for coercive state policies? This article addresses this question through a vignette experiment on coca forced eradication in Colombia. Participants were randomly assigned to scenarios in which communities either verbally objected to or mobilized against coercive eradication efforts. Exposure to mobilization, compared to verbal objection, reduces support for both unconditional eradication and outright opposition. By contrast, it increases support for eradication conditioned on community consent. These effects are consistent across racial frames, suggesting that the impact of dissent form may transcend ethnic boundaries. We interpret these findings as evidence that visible, organized community dissent can shift public preferences toward more community-centered and conditional approaches. These findings contribute to research on protest, state coercion, and public opinion by showing that the form of dissent shapes support for coercive state interventions.