Record Details

Replication Data for: Structural adjustment, partisan alignment, and protest in the developing world

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Replication Data for: Structural adjustment, partisan alignment, and protest in the developing world
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JT1HY9
 
Creator Reinsberg, Bernhard
Abouharb, M. Rodwan
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description When do IMF programs induce protest? Despite much cross-country research on this question, we currently lack evidence on how IMF programs affect individual predispositions for protest and protest behavior. We argue that governments facing IMF conditionality allocate adjustment burdens strategically, protecting their partisan supporters while punishing supporters of the political opposition. This intensification of distributional politics under IMF programs will lead to increased protests by opposition supporters. To test this argument, we draw on a mixed-method strategy combining individual-level survey evidence from 12 Sub-Saharan African countries and an intertemporal case study of Kenya. We find strong evidence for our argument. Opposition supporters are significantly more likely to protest when a government goes under an IMF program, especially when the program entails public-sector conditions. Our analysis suggests that governments are not innocent bystanders in the adjustment process. Instead, they co-determine inclinations for protest by deciding over the allocation of adjustment burdens, to the detriment of opposition groups and the benefit of their supporters. These results have important implications for the role of governments as purveyors of pressures for global policy reform induced by international financial institutions.
 
Subject Social Sciences
International Monetary Fund
conditionality
structural adjustment
Afrobarometer
Sub-Saharan Africa
protest
 
Date 2024-02-29
 
Contributor Reinsberg, Bernhard