Economic Grievances Research Articles

Understanding Brexit: Cultural Resentment Versus Economic Grievances

This study considers the evidence for ‘demand-side’ theories seeking to explain the outcome of the Brexit referendum and subsequent divisions in UK politics. Economic theories suggest that the Leave decision was driven mainly by the ‘left-behinds’ in jobs or wages, such as those living in struggling communities in the North of England, the Midlands, and Wales. By contrast cultural accounts emphasize political attitudes and values, including long-term British suspicion about the European Union project, public disgust with the political class at Westminster, anxiety about the effects of the refugee crisis and migration from other EU countries, and opposition to the government’s austerity cuts. These theories can also be regarded as complimentary rather than rivals, for example if economic deprivation catalyzed resentment about immigrants and the rejection of open borders. To examine these issues, Part I sets out the electoral context and historical background in the run up to Brexit – and its implications for party competition in the UK. Drawing upon a larger book-length study, Part II sets out the arguments based on economic and cultural theories about the British electorate. Part III describes the evidence from the British Election Study panel surveys, which allows us to examine the factors dividing supporters in the Leave and Remain camps in the 2016 Brexit referendum, as well as those predicting support for UKIP from 2015-17. Part IV examines the impact of demographic control factors like age and sex, indicators of economic grievances, and the cultural profile of voters in their authoritarian and populist values, as well as their attitudes towards the Europe Union, immigration, and left-right ideology. The conclusion in Part V considers developments since Brexit and their implications for the future of populism in the UK. The main advocate of Brexit, UKIP, succeeded in attaining this goal, but then failed to achieve a decisive break through as a parliamentary party. Yet authoritarian-populism remains alive and well in post-Brexit Britain, absorbed into the bloodstream of the body politic, disrupting and dividing both major parties.

Understanding Brexit: Cultural Resentment Versus Economic Grievances

This study considers the evidence for 'demand-side' theories seeking to explain the outcome of the Brexit referendum and subsequent divisions in UK politics. Economic theories suggest that the Leave decision was driven mainly by the 'left-behinds' in jobs or wages, such as those living in struggling communities in the North of England, the Midlands, and Wales. By contrast cultural accounts emphasize political attitudes and values, including long-term British suspicion about the European Union project, public disgust with the political class at Westminster, anxiety about the effects of the refugee crisis and migration from other EU countries, and opposition to the government's austerity cuts. These theories can also be regarded as complimentary rather than rivals, for example if economic deprivation catalyzed resentment about immigrants and the rejection of open borders. To examine these issues, Part I sets out the electoral context and historical background in the run up to Brexit--and its implications for party competition in the UK. Drawing upon a larger book-length study, Part II sets out the arguments based on economic and cultural theories about the British electorate. Part III describes the evidence from the British Election Study panel surveys, which allows us to examine the factors dividing supporters in the Leave and Remain camps in the 2016 Brexit referendum, as well as those predicting support for UKIP from 2015-17. Part IV examines the impact of demographic control factors like age and sex, indicators of economic grievances, and the cultural profile of voters in their authoritarian and populist values, as well as their attitudes towards the Europe Union, immigration, and left-right ideology. The conclusion in Part V considers developments since Brexit and their implications for the future of populism in the UK. The main advocate of Brexit, UKIP, succeeded in attaining this goal, but then failed to achieve a decisive break through as a parliamentary party. Yet authoritarian-populism remains alive and well in post-Brexit Britain, absorbed into the bloodstream of the body politic, disrupting and dividing both major parties.

Governing in the New Hard Times

After the financial crash of 2008 and the recession of 2009 the western capitalist democracies entered a new era of hard times, marked by a very weak recovery, austerity, powerful deflationary pressures, and the persistence of emergency measures such as record low interest rates and quantitative easing. National-populist parties began to attract increasing support for an anti-globalisation, anti-immigration, and anti-elite platform. The western political order remained resilient, until the vote for BREXIT in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US in 2016. In seeking to respond to the cultural and economic grievances that lie at the heart of the national-populist surge, governments are obliged to confront three deep structural problems : secular stagnation, international deadlocks, and political legitimacy. The intractability of these problems has contributed to a sense of drift and failure, and is contributing to the pressure for more radical policies which seek to change fundamentally the shape of the liberal international market order as it has existed for the last seventy years.

The Four Faces of Political Participation in Argentina: Using Latent Class Analysis to Study Political Behavior

In this paper we use latent class analysis to identify the four faces of political participation. Previous research has generally focused on conventional forms of political participation (for example, voting), with some research looking as well at unconventional forms of political participation, like protesting. Moreover, most research studies these forms of participation separately. However, citizens actually engage in both conventional and unconventional participation simultaneously, and here we present a methodology that can identify citizens who engage in both, neither, or only one form of participation. Using our approach, we examine a series of hypotheses about how social, political, and economic grievances lead citizens to engage in each face of political participation. We apply this methodology to recent survey data from Argentina, which we argue is an excellent case for studying both forms of participation simultaneously. This application demonstrates the utility of the latent class approach for studying the four faces of political participation.

War experiences, economic grievances, and political participation in postwar societies: An empirical analysis of Kosovo

This article contributes to the debate evolving around the political legacy of armed conflict. We evaluate the effect of war experiences during the 1998–1999 civil war in Kosovo on various modes of political participation. We find that war victims are on average more likely to participate in non-institutionalized forms of participation such as signing petitions and to participate in protests in the postwar era. In addition, we show that the impact of war experiences on political protest is contingent upon the postwar situation. War experiences are linked to protest behavior when a survivor is economically disadvantaged after the war. However, war experiences lose their impact on protest behavior when people do not encounter economic grievances in the postwar environment. In this vein, exploring the postwar context enriches our understanding of the political legacy of war victimization.

The Invisible Hand of Rent Seeking: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Budget Deficits

Historically, social and economic grievances resulted in sociopolitical instability, which served as a medium of institutional changes in the evolution of Western Europe toward a more inclusive regime. In today's democratic capitalism, however, a great many interest groups have burgeoned and acquired political power to seek their own interest at the expense of the welfare of the general public. Interest groups thrive on a tacit agreement with those members of the political body whose primary interest lies in their own aggrandizement. Such agreement inevitably leads to excessive claims on public resources, interferes with the market system by perpetuating rent in many sectors of the economy, erodes the moral values of trust and respect, and causes moral hazard among the legislators by undermining budgetary discipline. Moreover, the inevitable friction among the legislators often results in gridlock in public decision making. The democratic capitalism thus is losing on both ends: the market efficiency and political efficacy, with reduced prospect of economic growth. This paper attempts to explain these phenomena as a strategic equilibrium of the major players in the politico-economic arena.

Political distrust amidst The Great Recession: The mitigating effect of welfare state effort

The economic crisis that erupted in Europe in 2008 has not only caused economic grievances, but hurt citizens’ trust in their national political system. By now, most research attributes this loss in political trust to governments’ failing economic achievements. This article considers if and to what extent the drop in political trust amidst The Great Recession also was connected to governments’ welfare state effort. Combining individual and country-level data in a comparative multilevel research design, this paper overall finds that in cases of sudden and severe performance setbacks for which accountability is hard to assign, trust in democratic institutions may suffer. However, political trust seems to be especially susceptible to economic performance setbacks in countries with relatively low levels of welfare state effort, suggesting that governments might blunt some of the pain of an economic crisis by providing generous welfare state services to those in need.

Perils of pluralism: Electoral violence and incumbency in sub-Saharan Africa

Why do some multiparty elections lead to political violence while others do not? Despite extensive literatures on democratization, civil war, and violence against civilians in civil war, the topic of electoral violence has received less attention. We develop a set of theoretical propositions to explain this variation, testing them on an original dataset on African elections from 1990 to 2008. We find that elections in which an incumbent presidential candidate is running for re-election are significantly more likely to experience electoral violence, both prior to the election and after voting has taken place. We argue that clientelism is behind this pattern, and that clients often resort to electoral violence to protect a reliable incumbent patron. On the other hand, when an incumbent candidate is not running for office, we argue that clients are less willing to assume the risks of participating in electoral violence because candidates in the election have not established a record of delivering patronage at the executive level. We further find some evidence that pre-existing social conflicts increase the risk of pre-election violence. We suggest that this finding is due to the tendency of political elites to mobilize voters around pre-existing political and economic grievances to promote their candidacies, in turn heightening tensions and divisions. We also examine, but find little support for, a number of other possible determinants of electoral violence, such as regime type, income level, international observers, ongoing civil war, pathway to power, and first elections after civil war. The article contributes not only to a small but growing literature on electoral violence but also to a burgeoning literature on political behavior in African elections.

Austerity and Protest: Popular Contention in Times of Economic Crisis

Austerity and Protest: Debates and Challenges, (Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso) PART I: AUSTERITY, ECONOMIC GRIEVANCES, AND PROTEST POLITICS 1. Political Mobilization in Times of Crises: The Relationship between Economic and Political Crises, (Hanspeter Kriesi) 2. At the Ballot Boxes or in the Streets and Factories: Economic Contention in the Visegrad Group, (Ondrej Cisar and Jiri Navratil) PART II: SOCIAL BASES OF PROTEST IN TIMES OF AUSTERITY 3. Are Anti-Austerity Movements 'Old' or 'New'?, (Maria Grasso and Marco Giugni) 4. Does Class Matter in Protests? Social Class, Attitudes towards Inequality, and Political Trust in European Demonstrations in a Time of Economic Crisis, (Anders Hylmo and Magnus Wennerhag) PART III: PERCEIVED EFFECTIVENESS AND PARTICIPATION 5. Bridging the Protest Macro-Micro Gap: Investigating the Link between Motivations, Political Efficacy and Political Context, (Pauline Ketelaars) 6. Trust and Efficacy Taking to the Streets in Times of Crisis: Variation among Activists, (Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo Bosi, and Donatella della Porta) PART IV: COLLECTIVE INTERESTS AND SOLIDARITY 7. Beneficiary and Conscience Constituencies: On Interests and Solidarity, (Bert Klandermans, Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, and Marie-Louise Damen) 8. Anti-Cuts Protests in the UK: Are We Really All in This Together?, (Clare Saunders, Silke Roth, and Cristiana Olcese) PART V: AUSTERITY, PROTEST, AND THE LABOR MARKET 9. A Tale of Two Crises: Contentious Responses to Anti-Austerity Policy in Spain, (Camilo Cristancho) 10. Feelings of Hardship and Anxiety for Contentious Politics: Economic Crisis and the Unemployed Youth in France, (Manlio Cinalli and Pavlos Vasilopoulos) Austerity and Protest: Lessons and Future Research, (Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso)

Rooted in Poverty?: The Political Economy of Terrorism in Xinjiang

AbstractIt has been one of the most debated puzzles in the study of political economy of terrorism whether economic development can curb terrorism. In Xinjiang, a multi-ethnic region in West China, it is widely believed that higher income levels can decrease the likelihood of terrorism conducted by Uyghur separatists or Islamic extremists. However, the county-level data for the year of 2013 show that better economic performance may not work as is expected. Instead, empirical evidence indicates that income is positively associated with the probability of terrorist attacks, and the effect is statistically significant. Projects that are aimed at boosting local economic growth result in a flood of migrants, and the local Uyghurs are disadvantaged in the employment market. Consequently, economic grievances will be generated. Some, but not all, Uyghurs have a shared motivation to resist, but tight social control in the region constrains the form of resistance, in the sense that neither mass protests nor armed rebellion are feasible. Terrorist attacks that come at a lower cost become a preferable choice. In addition to economic grievances and tight control, external factors also help to boost terrorist activities in Xinjiang, but more empirical and field research is needed before we could clarify how external factors, such as the international jihadist movement, interact with local conditions and result in terrorism in the region.

Downbound Spiral? Economic Grievances, Perceived Social Protection, and Political Distrust

Momentous events in Western democracies have brought renewed attention to how various aspects of government-controlled policy outputs and outcomes affect citizens politically. Unlike most previous research this study uses individual-level panel data to test the link between government performance and political trust. Moreover, we gauge performance in more policy domains than previous research including key aspects of government-controlled social services as well as a wide range of economic risks. We find that evaluations of government performance do have implications for trust in institutions of representative democracy. The evidence, however, is stronger for evaluations of social protection than for economic risks. Crucially, our analysis suggests that the relationship between performance evaluations and distrust is not unidirectional, but reciprocal. The relationship may thus be described as a “downbound spiral” where dissatisfied and vulnerable groups develop distrust, which in turn makes for a more pessimistic interpretation of the political world.

The Determinants of Religious Radicalization

A variety of theories attempt to explain why some individuals radicalize along religious lines. Few studies, however, have jointly put these diverse hypotheses under empirical scrutiny. Focusing on Muslim–Christian tensions in Kenya, we distill salient micro-, meso-, and macro-level hypotheses that try to account for the recent spike in religious radicalization. We use an empirical strategy that compares survey evidence from Christian and Muslim respondents with differing degrees of religious radicalization. We find no evidence that radicalization is predicted by macro-level political or economic grievances. Rather, radicalization is strongly associated with individual-level psychological trauma, including historically troubled social relations, and process-oriented factors, particularly religious identification and exposure to radical networks. The findings point to a model of radicalization as an individual-level process that is largely unaffected by macro-level influences. As such, radicalization is better understood in a relational, idea-driven framework as opposed to a macro-level structural approach.

From rural rebellions to urban riots: political competition and changing patterns of violent political revolt in Uganda

Violent political revolt has been common in independent Uganda. For a long time, such revolts were exclusively expressed as rural-based rebel groups fighting the government. Since the mid-2000s, however, this seems to have come to an end. Instead, urban riots, very rare in the past, have become much more common. This article analyses these changing patterns of types and location of violent political revolt in Uganda under the National Resistance Movement government. It argues that the earlier prevalence of rural rebellions can be explained by the combination of a coercive and militarised state, and weak and ethnically factionalised political forces who took their violent resistance to rural regional bases. Over time, however, government counter-insurgency became more effective and the conditions for insurgency were undermined by withdrawal of external support. Furthermore, the reintroduction of multi-party politics in 2005 opened up new avenues for political expression. The changes to the political system were, however, more nominal than real in many respects. While the rebel option had become less attractive and feasible, a series of social, economic and political grievances remained which were only partly channelled through party politics. They also found expression through sporadic urban violent revolt.

Repression, Redistribution and the Problem of Authoritarian Control

Theories of authoritarianism assert that autocratic governments follow repressive and redistributive policies which impede mass mobilization, mitigate economic grievances and prevent regime instability. However, policy formulation and implementation remain opaque and under-theorized elements of authoritarian politics. I argue that the mix of repressive and redistributive policies chosen by a regime is a function of intra-elite conflict between hard-liners and soft-liners. The power of the two factions and their influence on policy evolve as members of the elite learn to judge the comparative advantages of the regime in repression and redistribution. Hard-liners will be ascendant in regimes with a comparative advantage in repression, while soft-liners will be ascendant in regimes with a comparative advantage in redistribution. I illustrate these arguments with an account of the East German regime’s response to the 17 June uprising in 1953, including analysis of an original data set on secret police informants and food supplies after the unrest.

Protests in Burkina Faso, Ivory-Coast, Senegal, Mauretania, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry (2011-2014): A Comparative Analysis of Mobilization, Grievances and Opportunities

Popular protests have toppled regimes in Burkina-Faso and Ivory Coast and exerted pressure on regimes in Senegal, Mauretania, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry to embark on political and economic reforms. The paper seeks to find answers to why protests erupted in these countries and why some of the protests where nonviolent and others violent. The central theme of the paper is to identify theoretical and practical inferences, while using a comparative framework. The paper supports the grievance, political opportunities and resource mobilization arguments to explain why citizens protested in all these countries. Economic grievances in all the cases are rooted in corruption, income inequality, unemployment and the lack of opportunities. Political grievances connect people to exclusion from political power and a desire for democracy. To explain protests in the four cases, the dissertation draws on the literature of mobilization, repertoires of contention, social media, youth bulge, unemployment and regime type to test two grievance based hypothesis and one violence based hypothesis. The paper concludes with evidence that protests in all the cases are associated with socioeconomic and socio political grievances. There is also evidence that the nature of violence is largely caused by the function of regime and security force type.

Rural Grievances, Landholding Inequality, and Civil Conflict

Prominent theories stress the role of economic grievances in promoting political instability and conflict. They often point to inequality in the ownership of land as a primary source of such grievances. However, cross-national empirical studies fail to confirm a link between unequal distributions of land and civil war. These findings, I contend, stem from problems in theorizing and measuring rural inequality. This article distinguishes between the effects of total landholding inequality and the concentration of land ownership on conflict. Total landholding inequality, which includes landlessness, captures economic grievances in the countryside and is positively associated with conflict. Gini coefficients of landholding concentration capture both grievances and landowners’ capacity to organize as rebels and a repressive rural elite. The relationship between landholding Ginis and conflict is shaped like an inverted “U”: inequality correlates with an increasing likelihood of conflict, but as the concentration of landholdings reaches very high levels, the likelihood of conflict decreases with the formation of a small repressive class of landowners. Results of cross-national regressions—using new data on total landholding inequality and the concentration of landholdings—confirm these predictions. My findings provide evidence that landholding inequality is an important underlying cause of civil war.

Institutional Grievances and Right-Wing Extremism: Voting for Golden Dawn in Greece

This article examines the effect of institutional grievances on extreme right voting by using an original survey to analyse voter support for the Greek Golden Dawn (GD). The article first examines various theories of extreme-right voting and then develops the concept of institutional grievances. Using structural equation modeling, it shows that that the strongest correlates of GD voting are those capturing institutional grievances. Economic grievances have a limited and cultural grievances a moderate effect on GD voting. The article compares the findings with those of the broader literature on extreme-right voting. It concludes with some suggestions on how to link the findings with broader developments in Europe.

The determinants of domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: Economic grievance, societal change and political resentment

This study tests three categories of motivations for domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: economic grievances, particularly those produced by economic restructuring; societal changes that challenge notions of white male privilege; and political and public policy elements that stoke resentments. Executing a series of negative binomial regression estimations on state-level data in the USA for the period 1970–2011, I find that measures of societal factors—specifically increase in abortion rates and growing female participation in the labor force—and political indicators such as Democratic Party control of the White House, precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks. Factors associated with economic hardships—such as poverty, the decline of manufacturing employment and the “Farm Crisis”—as well as growth of the non-white population, control of state government by the Democratic Party and growth of average Federal Income Tax rates—are not found to be significant predictors of right-wing terrorism.

The Patterns of Syrian Uprising: Comparing Hama in 1980–1982 and Homs in 2011

Economic grievances that marginalized rural citizens and eroded the Syrian government’s political base are widely considered to have sparked the 2011 uprising. Although the country’s 1980–1982 protests were also blamed on economic factors, commentators to date have largely resisted comparing the events. This article draws parallels between Hama in the lead-up to 1980–1982 and Homs pre-2011, arguing that while there are differences between the uprisings—including the socioeconomic group involved—the root causes of grievance were remarkably similar. Both uprisings followed a redrawing of Syria’s social contract that marginalized a group that had previously had a stake in the Syrian state. In both cases, a new underclass was formed that became the backbone of the political unrest. Although economic factors cannot explain the 2011 uprising in its entirety, this article argues that some of the seed dynamics in 2011 were remarkably similar to 1980–1982.

Ethno-political Organizations in the Middle East: When Do They Opt for Violence?

AbstractWhy do some ethno-political organizations resort to violence while others abstain? Are ethno-political organizations with a religious/Islamist ideology more violence-prone compared to non-religious ones? In addition to commonly cited factors such as grievances, political opportunities/constraints, resources, and organizational characteristics, I argue that the existence of youth bulges in a society also increases the probability of adopting violent strategies by ethno-political organizations. Frustrated young males under repressive and authoritarian regimes tend to be likely recruits for violent organizations. I use the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior dataset, which includes 118 organizations in 16 countries of the Middle East and North Africa to test my hypotheses. The findings suggest that youth bulges, economic grievances, group fractionalization, external support, and state repression increase the probability of use of violent strategies by ethno-political organizations whereas religious ideology is insignificant. Youth bulges foster violence especially in autocratic countries.