Do individuals become less polarized through crises? Scholars have illustrated how crises can both deepen social tensions or bring communities closer together. I reconcile these approaches, demonstrating how crises introduce a period in which individuals are more willing to put aside political differences in order to provide aid. I show this operates through an increased support for civil society, which can effectively meet public needs while politicians may struggle and fail in the process of goods provision. I show this effect decays over time as crises lose their immediacy. I first demonstrate a global trend in a dataset of over 5,700 crisis events. I then experimentally test and find support for my theory via a pre-registered conjoint experiment embedded within an original panel survey surrounding a major crisis in Poland. I find that individuals are more likely to endorse cross-partisan civic initiatives during crises and are less affectively polarized. Next, I evaluate mechanisms via 58 qualitative interviews, as well as with two original datasets comprising the universe of civil society organizations in Poland (>167,000 CSOs) and those that provided aid to Ukrainian refugees. I find evidence of decreased trust in and support for traditional political parties in places where CSOs provided extensive aid. My findings have implications for managing the aftermath of crises that require large scale mutual aid. While individuals may lose faith in political elites, civil society-led aid may provide an alternative route to aid provision and forge short-term depolarization.

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