Abstract
Beyond the hopes placed in Africa’s emergent middle class as an engine of economic growth, some analysts see this group as a bastion of political stability and enduring de-mocratisation across the continent. This paper’s approach differs from that of most studies, which treat the middle class as a homogeneous group, through two key contributions. First, using cluster analysis, I propose a novel way of conceptualising social class that broadly draws on the Weberian idea of shared life chances. I apply this method to South Africa and identify five social classes characterised by their members’ living standards, overall life satisfaction, and self-perceived upward mobility. Second, the empirical analysis reveals significant discrepancies in attitudes towards democracy between the downwardly and upwardly mobile strata of the middle class, which I term the “anxious” and the “climbers,” respectively. On the one hand, the “climbers” show the highest generic support for democracy as a form of government, whereas the “anxious” middle class displays feelings of resignation. On the other hand, I find indicative evidence of a status-quo bias among the “climbers.” Rather than assuming a more demanding or critical stance in politics, they allow their political priorities to be at least partly shaped by an interest in securing and expanding attained living standards; being upwardly mobile is even associated with a higher tolerance for government attempts to constrain freedom of information, opinion, or expression.
Highlights
2 The Link between Socio-Economic Development, Class Attitudes, and Democratisation 3 The Conceptualisation of Social Class 4 Analysis of the Link between Class and Democratic Attitudes 5 Conclusion Bibliography Tables Appendix
The wave of upbeat stories on African growth as a positive outlier in a world increasingly characterised by economic volatility, financial turbulence, and political instability has been excitedly embraced by the business community
Despite race looming large in South Africa, even when I restrict the sample to African re‐ spondents and redo the analysis of subsections 4.1 and 4.2, I find that the described class pat‐ terns persist in these subsample regressions
Summary
The wave of upbeat stories on African growth as a positive outlier in a world increasingly characterised by economic volatility, financial turbulence, and political instability has been excitedly embraced by the business community. More than a few companies, management consultancies, and fund managers have celebrated the continent as the “new frontier.” A cen‐ tral protagonist in this optimistic narrative is Africa’s emergent middle class. Bile stratum of the middle class, whom I call the “anxious” given their self‐reported fears of not being able to sustain their position in society; (iv) the upwardly mobile stratum of the middle class, whom I call the “climbers” given their high aspirations to move up the social ladder; and (v) the “elite,” who are the only class able to afford a luxurious lifestyle On this basis, I provide evidence regarding the extent to which there is an identi‐ fiable link between class membership and people’s general attitudes towards democracy, their assessment of the functioning of the public sector, and their demands to improve gov‐ ernment performance and accountability in South Africa. This group’s policy priori‐ ties underpin Inglehart’s post‐materialist theory to some extent: Mattes (2015) confirmed that black middle‐class respondents are overall more likely to prioritise higher‐order needs of good governance and self‐expression and be less concerned with basic needs than their poorer peers
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