Perceptions, Contagion, and Civil Unrest

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Anatomy of Brazil's Subjective Well-Being: A Tale of Growing Discontent and Polarization in the 2010s

“…Third, we provide support for the hypothesis that the decline in SWB in the 2010s could be indicative of increased polarization and decline in support for Brazil's social contract. 8 Building on the literature that has examined the relationship between SWB, social unrest (e.g., Arampatzi et al, 2018;Witte et al, 2020;Abi-Nasif et al, 2021), and voting behavior (e.g. Liberini et al, 2017;Ward et al, 2021) and using a nationally representative survey, collected for the Brazilian Electoral Study (Meneguello, 2019), we show that the decline in SWB and the switch in voter support in the 2018 general elections from one end of the political spectrum to the other were both associated with 7 A recent paper also provides evidence of considerable differences in preferences over policy areas across space and demographic groups in Colombia (Burger et al 2021).…”

Data Transparency and Long-Run Growth

“…Important reforms may lead to real welfare improvements yet have little impact on public perceptions because there is limited data tracking such improvements. These perceptions may foster a narrative that results in frustrations that manifest themselves in social protests and unrest (Abi-Nassif et al, 2020). Similarly, if data are of dubious quality, the public may lose confidence in such information and may not alter their perceptions despite positive findings from the data.…”