Structural adjustment, partisan alignment, and protest in the developing world

Abstract

When do IMF programs induce protest? Despite much cross-country research on this question, there is little evidence on how IMF programs affect individual predispositions for protest and protest behavior. This article argues that governments facing IMF conditionality allocate adjustment burdens strategically, protecting their partisan supporters while punishing supporters of the political opposition. This intensification of distributional politics under IMF programs will increase protests by opposition supporters. To test this argument, we utilize a mixed-method strategy combining individual-level survey evidence from 12 sub-Saharan African countries and an intertemporal case study of Kenya. The results find strong evidence for our argument. Opposition supporters are significantly more likely to protest when a government goes under an IMF program, especially when the program entails public-sector conditions. Our analysis suggests that governments are not innocent bystanders in the adjustment process. Instead, they co-determine inclinations for protest by deciding over the allocation of adjustment burdens to the detriment of opposition groups and the benefit of their supporters. These results have important implications for the role of governments as purveyors of pressures for global policy reform induced by international financial institutions.