Formal Education and Contentious Politics: The Case of Violent and Non-Violent Protest

Abstract

This study investigates the effect that formal education, as a factor of socio-economic development, has on the intensity and forms of political protest. By way of increased socialization of democratic values, increased cognitive understanding of the society at large, and human capital to participate in protests, increases in a country’s level of formal education should theoretically lead to increased levels of peaceful protest. However, increases in formal education are also theorized to play a mitigating role on the intensity of violent protests (riots) for the previously mentioned reasons as well as the fact that education acts as a strong factor in increasing social mobility. With data from 1960 to 2010 and spanning 216 countries, our empirical tests demonstrate a significant positive relationship between formal education and the intensity of anti-government protests at the early stages of socio-political development and a strong negative relationship between education and riots along the full range of data, with the later stages of development revealing a particularly strong negative correlation.

Students and protests: A quantitative cross-national analysis

“…At the same time, past studies (Sawyer and Korotayev, 2022) lead us to believe that there may be a qualitative difference between the forms that this protests activity takes; we propose an original theory as to why students would be more likely to join peaceful protests over violent ones. First, we argue that higher education provides students with higher levels of human capital, as well as access to social capital which allow protests to be more successful.…”

“…Those with lower income and educational attainment are characterized by lower of all forms of participation on average, primarily due to the barriers to participation that education would otherwise help them overcome (Teixeira, 1992), and a general apathetic disposition to the political process (Gaventa, 1982). That said, as past research has shown, societies without high levels of educational attainment are not devoid of political protests, but instead, they are of a qualitatively different form: violent rebelling and rioting (Beissinger, 2022;Sawyer and Korotayev, 2022;Ustyuzhanin et al, 2022).…”

“…That said, the qualitative form of these protests is a subject scantly investigated in the literature. Do students take after other younger people who tend to participate in both non-violent and violent protests, or do they experience the “pacifying effect” provided by education commonly described in the socio-political destabilization literature and participate primarily in non-violent demonstrations (see Østby et al, 2019; Sawyer and Korotayev, 2022)? We argue that the latter is more prominent; by promoting peaceful values and a socially conscious attitude toward politics, higher levels of human and social capital which make protests more successful, and social mobility which raises the opportunity costs of participating in riots and violent demonstrations, education is argued to serve as a mediating factor that pacifies more destructive tendencies in protest movements.…”

Education And Revolutions. Why Do Revolutionary Uprisings Take Violent Or Nonviolent Forms?

“…Turning to the main point, reviewed studies see a clear connection between the level of education and the choice of tactics for nonviolent resistance by the protesters, but this hypothesis has not been tested. Previous researchers found a consistent relationship between the likelihood of a peaceful protest and education (Machado, Scartascini and Tommasi 2011;Brancati 2014;Butcher and Svensson 2016;Kostelka and Rovny 2019;Korotayev et al 2020;Sawyer and Korotayev 2021), but they did not investigate how education influences the choice of tactics of the protesters.…”

“…Thus, education has a pacifistic effect, because it increases the level of human capital, reduces the relative costs of organizing protests leading to an increase in the likelihood of peaceful revolutionary protests (Brancati 2014;Sawyer and Korotayev 2021), and makes violence unacceptable on the personal level, instilling in people a tendency to tolerance (Jenkins and Wallace 1996). In general, it is confirmed by empirical studies: researchers find that the average number of years of schooling is positively and significantly associated with the level of peaceful protests (Brancati 2014;Butcher and Svensson 2016;Korotayev, Bilyuga, and Shishkina 2018;Korotayev et al 2020;Kostelka and Rovny 2019;Machado, Scartascini and Tommasi 2011;Sawyer and Korotayev 2021). But at the same time, it is negatively associated with the likelihood of a civil war, which appears as an extreme form of violent revolutionary conflict (Collier 2004;Barakat and Urdal 2009).…”