IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v63y2019i1p31-58.html

Social Inequality, State-centered Grievances, and Protest: Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander De Juan
  • Eva Wegner

Abstract

What role does horizontal social inequality play for political protest in middle-income countries? We argue that public social service provision is an important driver of state perceptions. When a state fails to deliver services in an equitable manner, trust in institutions erodes and protest becomes more likely. We use a mixed methods design to investigate this argument in South Africa. First, we combine police event records with census data to estimate correlations between service inequality and protests. Second, we draw on an opinion survey with 27,000 respondents to investigate the suggested mechanism linking social inequality to protest through political attitudes. Third, we focus on qualitative protest accounts in two areas identified by a matching approach to assess the plausibility of our quantitative findings. Throughout these analyses, we document a robust association between horizontal social inequality and protest.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander De Juan & Eva Wegner, 2019. "Social Inequality, State-centered Grievances, and Protest: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 63(1), pages 31-58, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:63:y:2019:i:1:p:31-58
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002717723136
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002717723136
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002717723136?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S. Mansoob Murshed & Scott Gates, 2005. "Spatial–Horizontal Inequality and the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 121-134, February.
    2. Peter Alexander, 2010. "Rebellion of the poor: South Africa's service delivery protests -- a preliminary analysis," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(123), pages 25-40, March.
    3. Idean Salehyan & Cullen S. Hendrix & Jesse Hamner & Christina Case & Christopher Linebarger & Emily Stull & Jennifer Williams, 2012. "Social Conflict in Africa: A New Database," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 503-511, September.
    4. Derick W. Brinkerhoff & Anna Wetterberg & Stephen Dunn, 2012. "Service Delivery and Legitimacy in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 273-293, February.
    5. DiPasquale, Denise & Glaeser, Edward L., 1998. "The Los Angeles Riot and the Economics of Urban Unrest," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 52-78, January.
    6. Frances Stewart, 2000. "Crisis Prevention: Tackling Horizontal Inequalities," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(3), pages 245-262.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Isaac Kalonda Kanyama, 2017. "Patterns and trends in horizontal inequality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," WIDER Working Paper Series 151, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Kazeem B. Ajide & Olorunfemi Y. Alimi, 2021. "Income inequality, human capital and terrorism in Africa: Beyond exploratory analytics," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 165, pages 218-240.
    3. repec:osf:socarx:afy37_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Camille Laville, 2018. "The econometrical causal analysis of internal conflicts: The evolutions of a growing literature [L’analyse économétrique des conflits internes par l’approche causale : les évolutions d’une littérat," Working Papers hal-01940461, HAL.
    5. Ostby, Gudrun, 2007. "Horizontal inequalities, political environment, and civil conflict : evidence from 55 developing countries, 1986-2003," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4193, The World Bank.
    6. De Juan, Alexander & Pierskalla, Jan & Schwarz, Elisa, 2020. "Natural disasters, aid distribution, and social conflict – Micro-level evidence from the 2015 earthquake in Nepal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    7. Solveig Hillesund, 2022. "To fight or demonstrate? Micro foundations of inequality and conflict," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 39(2), pages 166-190, March.
    8. Martin Ottmann & Johannes Vüllers, 2015. "The Power-Sharing Event Dataset (PSED): A new dataset on the promises and practices of power-sharing in post-conflict countries1," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 32(3), pages 327-350, July.
    9. Tuki, Daniel, 2023. "Undead Past: What Drives Support for the Secessionist Goal of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in Nigeria? (Version 2)," SocArXiv afy37, Center for Open Science.
    10. Isaac Kalonda Kanyama, 2017. "Patterns and trends in horizontal inequality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-151, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Gudrun Østby, 2013. "Inequality and political violence: A review of the literature," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 206-231, June.
    12. Camille Laville, 2018. "The econometrical causal analysis of internal conflicts: The evolutions of a growing literature [L’analyse économétrique des conflits internes par l’approche causale : les évolutions d’une littérat," CERDI Working papers hal-01940461, HAL.
    13. Alexander De Juan & Jan H. Pierskalla, 2015. "Manpower to coerce and co-opt—State capacity and political violence in southern Sudan 2006–2010," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 32(2), pages 175-199, April.
    14. Leila M Harris, 2020. "Assessing states: Water service delivery and evolving state–society relations in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(2), pages 290-311, March.
    15. Patricia Justino, 2012. "Shared Societies and Armed Conflict: Costs, Inequality and the Benefits of Peace," Working Papers 2012/35, Maastricht School of Management.
    16. Butler, Dana, 2021. "Horizontal inequality and grievances: A lethal combination? A case study analyzing the impact of the Israeli settlement policy on the level of violence of Palestinian citizens living in Hebron," IPE Working Papers 168/2021, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    17. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos Molina, 2020. "Facebook Causes Protests," HiCN Working Papers 323, Households in Conflict Network.
    18. Ketchley, Neil & Eibl, Ferdinand & Gunning, Jeroen, 2023. "Anti-austerity riots in late developing states: evidence from the 1977 Egyptian Bread Intifada," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119831, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Jansesberger, Viktoria, 2024. "Storms, floods, landslides and elections in India's growing metropolises: Hotbeds for political protest?," Working Papers 28, University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies".
    20. Bhubaneswor Dhakal & Hugh Bigsby & Ross Cullen, 2012. "Socioeconomic Impacts of Public Forest Policies on Heterogeneous Agricultural Households," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 53(1), pages 73-95, September.
    21. Krampe, Florian & Hegazi, Farah & VanDeveer, Stacy D., 2021. "Sustaining peace through better resource governance: Three potential mechanisms for environmental peacebuilding," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:63:y:2019:i:1:p:31-58. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.