Subjective Well-Being and Peaceful Uprisings

Witte, Caroline T.; Burger, Martijn; Ianchovichina, Elena

doi:10.1596/1813-9450-8705

Cited by 11 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…The rising awareness of social ills is partly due to the modernization process in which society is seen to be less of a moral order given by God, and in which an increasing number of people call for improvements in social conditions. Finally, dissatisfaction alone does not bring political action, which typically arises only in combination with perceived chances for change (Klandermans, ; Witte et al, ). This paper does not explore the question why some developing MENA countries experienced political violence and regime change, whereas in others the protests remained peaceful and limited in scope.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring

Arampatzi

Burger

Ianchovichina³

et al. 2018

Review of Income and Wealth

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AND ElEna ianchovichinaWorld Bank AND tina röhricht and ruut vEEnhovEn Erasmus University RotterdamDespite progress with economic and social development over several decades, life satisfaction was relatively low and declining in many developing Arab countries in the second half of the 2000s-a situation described in this paper as the "unhappy development" paradox. The paper empirically tests the direction and strength of association of a range of objective and subjective factors with subjective well-being in the Middle East and North Africa in the years immediately preceding the Arab Spring uprisings (2009-10). The findings suggest a significant, negative association between life satisfaction levels and each of the main perceived grievances voiced during the 2011 uprisings-dissatisfaction with the standard of living, poor labor market conditions, and corruption in the form of nepotism or cronyism. The increased prevalence of dissatisfaction with the standard of living contributed the most to the decline in subjective well-being during this period, followed by worsening labor market conditions manifested in increased unemployment and decline in self-reported earnings. In addition, perceptions about corruption became more important for people's life satisfaction, particularly in the Arab Spring countries where the uprisings were most intense.JEL Codes: D60, I31, Z13 economies, except the Republic of Yemen, and was low on average. The incomes of the bottom 40 percent, measured as 2005 PPP-adjusted per capita expenditure, grew at higher rates than average expenditures in many developing Arab countries for which information was available (Ianchovichina 2018). The Gini inequality indexes were moderate by international standards and did not worsen in most MENA economies (Ianchovichina 2018). Importantly, over the past decades the region had made notable strides in reaching not only the Millennium Development Goals related to poverty and access to infrastructure services (especially drinking water and sanitation and Internet connectivity), but also those related to reducing hunger and child and maternal mortality, and increasing school enrollment (Iqbal and Kiendrebeogo, 2016).Prior to the Arab Spring uprisings, most developing MENA countries were seen as relatively stable places. Only two MENA countries-Iraq (7th) and the Republic of Yemen (15th) -made it to the top 25 of the 2010 Failed States Index 1 of Foreign Policy. Libya and Tunisia were ranked 111th and 118th of 177 countries, respectively, and so they appeared among the stronger and less fragile countries in the world (Goodwin, 2011). With autocratic rulers in power for many years, the cracks in these countries' models of government remained invisible to most 1 The Failed States Index measures stability based on economic, political, and military indicators. Figure 1a. Satisfaction with Life and GDP per Capita, 2007-10. Note: Numbers are weighted averages for 145 countries. Abbreviations: EGY = Egypt; JOR = Jordan; LBN = Lebanon; MAR = Morocco; WBG = West Bank and...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring

Arampatzi

Burger

Ianchovichina³

et al. 2018

Review of Income and Wealth

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The former explores the effects of subjective well-being on both violent and nonviolent uprisings using the Gallup World Poll; the latter studies contagious protests with data from both protest counts and news media articles. Witte et al (2020) find that an increase in the percentage of self-reported suffering is positively related to nonviolent protests, but not their violent counterparts. Their measure of subjective well-being is based on individuals' ratings of their current and anticipated future life satisfaction.…”

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confidence: 59%

“…Our study builds on Witte et al (2020) and Arezki et al (2020a). The former explores the effects of subjective well-being on both violent and nonviolent uprisings using the Gallup World Poll; the latter studies contagious protests with data from both protest counts and news media articles.…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Data on nonviolent uprisings are available from the National Domestic Conflict Database through the Cross-National Time-Series (CNTS) Data Archive (Banks and Wilson, 2020). The data set has been used widely in the literature primarily because of the extent of both its geographic coverage of 200 plus countries and time coverage since 1815 (Witte et al, 2020;Chenoweth & Ulfelder, 2017;Davenport, 1995). 2 We define nonviolent uprisings (also interchangeably referred to as civil resistance or civil unrest) as the sum of strikes and antigovernment demonstrations in a country (Witte et al, 2020).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In parallel, an emerging literature has explored the determinants of nonviolent protests (Chenoweth and Ulfelder, 2017;Witte et al, 2020;Arezki et al, 2020a). A pertinent question concerns the role of a populace's perceptions in generating nonviolent conflict.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceptions, Contagion, and Civil Unrest

Abi-Nassif¹,

Islam²,

Lederman³

2020

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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.

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Hope in Economics

Pleeging

Burger

2020

Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope

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As a topic of research in economics, hope has not been very prevalent. Following the neo-classical paradigm, economists have tended to focus on rationality, self-interest, and universals. A normative and subjective experience such as hope was not believed to fit well with this perspective. However, the development of several heterodox economic approaches over the past decades, such as behavioral economics, has led to renewed attention being given to emotion, subjectivity, and normativity. Economic research on concepts related to hope, such as anticipatory feelings, (consumer) confidence, expectations and aspirations has consequently increased. In general, these studies find that hopeful feelings have a strong motivating power for (economic) behavior. By and large, the effects of hope seem to be positive, ranging from longevity and health to innovation and well-being. Nonetheless, there have also been indications that prompt caution, for example when it comes to false hopes, disappointment, or possible manipulation of societal hope. The field of economics has gained much valuable insight from existing research but we argue that it could gain from further definitional clarity. We discuss the difference between hope and related concepts such as optimism, in particular when it comes to economic research, and suggest topics for future research that could benefit from a focus on hope.

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Subjective Well-Being and Peaceful Uprisings

Cited by 11 publications

References 50 publications

Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring

Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring

Perceptions, Contagion, and Civil Unrest

Hope in Economics

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