From the Schools to the Streets: Education and Anti-Regime Resistance in the West Bank

Abstract

Are better educated individuals more likely to engage in anti-regime resistance and why? Scholars of democratic politics widely view education as a key factor shaping political participation. Yet, the effect of education on participation in noninstitutionalized political conflict is less well understood. Using data from an original large-scale survey of participants and nonparticipants in Palestinian resistance, this article demonstrates that education has a complex, curvilinear effect on participation: intermediate levels of education significantly increase the likelihood of participation in protest but additional years of education do not. These findings are explained through a novel, institutionalist argument, which focuses on the structure of education rather than its content. The article's conclusions challenge existing perspectives that characterize participants in political conflict as either educated, underemployed, and disaffected or poor, uneducated, and marginalized.

The politics of nonviolent mobilization: Campaigns, competition, and social movement resources

“…First, by showing that open political competition corresponds with a higher likelihood of choosing nonviolence, the findings fit with work on the ‘domestic democratic peace’ (Davenport, 2007a,b) and political opportunity (McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly, 2001; Carey, 2009; Young & Dugan, 2011; Heger, 2014): when campaigns are more easily incorporated into the political process, it is more likely they forego violence as an inefficient means of achieving their demands. Second, by showing that social movement resources correspond with nonviolence, the findings fit with a literature which suggests the social movement resources of these campaigns – in particular the organizations, networks, and skills of participants which permit connections within and between social groups – drive nonviolent resistance (Thurber, 2019; Zeira, 2019; Dahlum, 2019; Clarke, 2014; Gade, 2020). Importantly, the findings complement both literatures: state characteristics and social movement resources shape campaign decisions.…”

“…In their analysis, the latter two categories have the strongest relationship with the emergence of nonviolence. Resource mobilization explanations comport with recent findings that the education level of campaign participants affects their ability to engage in nonviolent resistance (Zeira, 2019; Dahlum, 2019). For political opportunity, Cunningham (2013b) finds that political variables such as non-democracy and exclusion from power affect the use nonviolence as opposed to violent civil conflict.…”

“…Yet scholars’ understanding of what causes political movements to use nonviolent resistance – over other methods such as violence – remains incomplete. Explanations have focused on demographic (Dahlum, 2019; Zeira, 2019) or ideologically extreme (Ryckman, 2020) characteristics of the participants, the activities of other movements in the same country (Cunningham, Dahl & Frugé, 2017), structural grievances (Chenoweth & Ulfelder, 2017), and different combinations of these explanations (Cunningham, 2013b).…”

Violence on Many Sides: Framing Effects on Protest and Support for Repression

“…We show that the identity of an actor affects the public's willingness to justify a repressive state response. Thirdly, we contribute to the study of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and political violence in the United States, a highly salient issue in both cases in which the causes and effects of contentious events are debated (Canetti et al 2017; Pressman 2017; Zeira 2018). Our framework offers a lens with which to interpret these events, framing effects and how these effects vary across contexts.…”

Higher education and violent revolutionary activism under authoritarianism: Subnational evidence from Iran

“…There do exist studies on the relationship between education and other forms of high-risk political behavior such as participation in protest and terrorism. For participation in protest, see Dahlum and Wig (2019) and Zeira (2019). For Terrorism, see Berrebi (2007), Bravo and Dias (2006), Brockhoff et al (2015), Krueger and Malecek ova´(2003), Lee (2011) andTestas (2004).…”