How does everyday politics of participation manifest in post-disaster contexts? Can disaster prompt a political system to shift to more inclusive, open, and participatory governance of disaster? In this article, we draw on our ethnographic work in the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 and Nepal after the Gorkha Earthquake in 2015 to explore these questions. Our comparative ethnographic analysis shows that attempts at institutionalising participation served to further entrench authoritarian practices rather than promote citizen voice and government accountability. Post-disaster policies that invoke people’s participation, we argue, tend to (a) control rather than democratise information; (b) silence rather than promote citizen voice; (c) distort rather than respond to grievances. Our findings call for a reorientation of understanding of participation and accountability in post-disaster governance. Decision-makers, not merely disaster-affected communities, deserve to be the focus area of scholarly attention and policy reform, if community-led reconstruction agenda is to be realised in practice. Our conclusion has implications for the study and practice of democratic governance of disasters in unequal societies prone to disasters.

灾后背景下的日常参与政治如何体现？灾难能否促使政治体制转向更具包容性，开放性和参与性的灾难治理？在本文中，我们将利用2013年台风海盐在菲律宾和2015年戈尔卡地震后在尼泊尔的民族志研究来探讨这些问题。我们的比较人种学分析表明，将参与制度化的尝试有助于进一步巩固威权主义做法，而不是促进公民的话语权和政府问责制。我们认为，需要人们参与的灾后政策往往会（a）控制信息而不是使信息民主化；（b）保持沉默而不是提高公民的声音；（c）歪曲而不是回应委屈。我们的发现要求对灾难后治理中的参与和责任制进行重新定位。如果要在实践中实现以社区为主导的重建议程，则决策者，不仅是受灾社区，应该成为学术关注和政策改革的重点领域。我们的结论对容易发生灾害的不平等社会中灾害民主治理的研究和实践具有重要意义。