Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:08:18.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic Development, Mobility, and Political Discontent: An Experimental Test of Tocqueville’s Thesis in Pakistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2017

ANDREW HEALY ,
KATRINA KOSEC  and
CECILIA HYUNJUNG MO
ANDREW HEALY*
Affiliation:
Loyola Marymount University
KATRINA KOSEC*
Affiliation:
International Food Policy Research Institute
CECILIA HYUNJUNG MO*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
*
Andrew Healy is Professor of Economics (on leave), Loyola Marymount University, One LMU Drive, Room 4229, Los Angeles, CA 90045 ([email protected]); Senior Strategist for Player Personnel, Cleveland Browns, 76 Lou Groza Blvd., Berea, OH 44017.
Katrina Kosec is Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, Development Strategy and Governance Division, 2033 K Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20006 ([email protected]).
Cecilia Hyunjung Mo is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, PMB 0505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203 ([email protected]).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We consider the thesis of Alexis de Tocqueville (1856) that economic development and increased mobility may generate political discontent not present in more stagnant economies. For many citizens, as they become aware of the potential for improved living standards, their aspirations may increase faster than actual living standards. Expanded opportunity may then paradoxically result in dissatisfaction with government rather than greater confidence. We develop a formal model to capture Tocqueville’s (1856) verbal theory and test its predictions using a 2012–2013 face-to-face survey experiment conducted in Pakistan. The experiment utilizes established treatments to subtly manipulate either a participant’s perceptions of her own economic well-being, her perceptions of society-wide mobility, or both. As predicted by the theory, political discontent rises when declining personal well-being coincides with high mobility to create unrealized aspirations. The results thus identify the conditions under which expanded economic opportunity can lead to political unrest.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 111 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 605 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We thank the dedicated team at Innovative Development Strategies (IDS), who in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), carried out the extensive data collection activities for our Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey (RHPS). We are grateful to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for their support while this research was being conducted. We also thank Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse and Tanguy Bernard for providing us with the survey questions relating to aspirations from the IFPRI Ethiopia Rural Household Survey, which helped inform our survey questions on aspirations in the Pakistan RHPS. We gratefully acknowledge insightful comments and guidance from Adam Meirowitz, Emily Nacol, Danielle Resnick, Rick K. Wilson, Alan Wiseman, and Elizabeth Zechmeister, as well as the discussants and participants at the 2016 annual meeting of the Behavioral Models of Politics at University of Pittsburgh, the Midwest Political Science Association, and the Southern Political Science Association. All remaining errors are our own.

References

Acemoglu, Daron, Egorov, Georgy, and Sonin, Konstantin. 2015. “Re-evaluating de Tocqueville: Social Mobility and Stability of Democracy.” Working Paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Rodden, Jonathan, and Snyder, James M. Jr.. 2008. “The Strength of Issues: Using Multiple Measures to Gauge Preference Stability, Ideological Constraint, and Issue Voting.” American Political Science Review 102 (2): 215–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamini, Yoav, and Hochberg, Yosef. 1995. “Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A Practical and Powerful Approach to Multiple Testing.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological) 57 (1): 289–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamini, Yoav, Krieger, Abba M., and Yekutieli, Daniel. 2006. “Adaptive Linear Step-Up Procedures That Control the False Discovery Rate.” Biometrika 93 (3): 491–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berger, Jonah, Meredith, Marc, and Wheeler, S. Christian. 2008. “Contextual Priming: Where People Vote Affects How They Vote.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (26): 8846–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bernard, Tanguy, and Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum. 2014. “Aspirations: An Approach to Measurement with Validation Using Ethiopian Data.” Journal of African Economies 23 (2): 189–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernard, Tanguy, and Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum. 2012. “Measuring Aspirations: Discussion and Example from Ethiopia.” International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper 01190.Google Scholar
Biemer, Paul P., Groves, Robert M., Lyberg, Lars E., Mathiowetz, Nancy A., and Sudman, Seymour. 2011. Measurement Errors in Surveys. Vol. 173. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Blair, Dennis, Neumann, Ronald, and Olson, Eric. 2014. “Fixing Fragile States.” The National Interest, August 27.Google Scholar
Blau, Peter M. Blau, and Duncan, Otis D.. 1967. The American Occupational Structure. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Central Intelligence Agency. 2015. “The World Factbook 2013–14.” Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency.Google Scholar
Corak, Miles. 2012. “Economic Mobility Across the Generations in the United States: Comparisons, Causes, and Consequences.” Written Testimony to the United States Senate, Committee on Finance July 10th, 2012 Hearing on “Tax Reform: Drivers of Intergenerational Mobility and the Tax Code.” http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Corak%20Testimony.pdf.Google Scholar
Courneya, Kerry S., Jones, Lee W., Rhodes, Ryan E., and Blanchard, Chris M.. 2003. “Effect of Response Scales on Self-Reported Exercise Frequency.” American Journal of Health Behavior 27 (6): 613–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crosby, Faye. 1976. “A Model of Egoistic Relative Deprivation.” Psychological Review 83: 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeMarree, Kenneth G., Wheeler, S. Christian, and Petty, Richard E.. 2005. “Priming a New Identity: Self-Monitoring Moderates the Effects of Nonself Primes on Self-Judgments and Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89 (5): 657–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fair, Christine, Littman, Rebecca, Malhotra, Neil, and Shapiro, Jacob N.. 2015. “Relative Poverty, Perceived Violence, and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan.” Working Paper, Stanford University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Festinger, Leon. 1954. “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes.” Human Relations 7: 117–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genicot, Garance, and Ray, Debraj. 2017. “Aspirations and Inequality.” Econometrica 85 (2): 489–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghani, Ashraf, and Lockhart, Clare F.. 2009. Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldhammer, Arthur, and Elster, Jon. 2011. Tocqueville: The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haisley, Emily, Mostafa, Romel, and Loewenstein, George. 2008. “Subjective Relative Income and Lottery Ticket Purchases.” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 21: 283–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Chip, Larrick, Richard, and Wu, George. 1999. “Goals as Reference Points.” Cognitive Psychology 38: 79–109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirschman, Albert O., and Rothschild, Michael. 1973. “The Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the Course of Economic Development.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 87: 544–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Tversky, Amos. 1979. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.” Econometrica 47 (March): 263–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keidel, Albert. 2005. “The Economic Basis for Social Unrest in China.” Third European-American Dialogue on China, Washington, D.C., May 26–27.Google Scholar
Kosec, Katrina, and Khan, Huma. 2016. “Understanding the Aspirations of the Rural Poor.” In Agriculture and Rural Poverty Reduction in Pakistan, eds. Spielman, David, Malik, Sohail, Dorosh, Paul, and Ahmad, Nuzhat. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lamb, Robert D. 2008. “Ungoverned Areas and Threats from Safe Havens.” Washington, DC: Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. Retrieved May 29, 2017 (http://cissmdev.devcloud.acquia-sites.com/sites/default/files/papers/ugash_report_final.pdf).Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1988. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael Steven, and Nadeau, Richard. 2011. “Economic Voting Theory: Testing New Dimensions.” Electoral Studies 30 (2): 288–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1960. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lodge, Milton, and Taber, Charles S.. 2005. “The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis.” Political Psychology 26 (3): 8846–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menon, Geeta, Raghubir, Priya, and Schwarz, Norbert. 1997. “How Much Will I Spend? Factors Affecting Consumers’ Estimates of Future Expense.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 6 (2): 141–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert, and Rossi, Alice S.. 1950. “Contributions to the Theory of Reference Group Behavior.” In Continuitites in Social Research, eds. Merton, Robert, and Lazarsfeld, Paul. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Mo, Cecilia. 2012. “Essays in Behavioral Political Economy: The Effects of Affect, Attitude, and Aspirations.” Ph.D. Diss. Stanford University, Stanford, CA. http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/9623096.Google Scholar
Mo, Cecilia. 2017. “The Effects of Perceived Relative Poverty on Risk: An Aspirations-Based Model of Trafficking Vulnerability.” Political Behavior 1–31. Advance online publication. DOI:10.1007/s11109-017-9401-0.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana C., and Pemantle, Robin. 2015. “Standards for Experimental Research: Encouraging a Better Understanding of Experimental Methods.” Journal of Experimental Political Science 2 (02): 192–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, Torsten, and Tabellini, Guido. 2002. Political Economics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ray, Debraj. 2006. “Aspirations, Poverty and Economic Change.” In Understanding Poverty, eds. Banerjee, Abhijit V., Benabou, Roland, and Mookherjee, Dilip. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 409–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rockwood, Todd H., Sangster, Roberta L., and Dillman, Don A.. 1997. “The Effect of Response Categories on Questionnaire Answers.” Sociological Methods and Research 26 (1): 118–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shwarz, Norbert, Hipper, Hans J., Deutsch, Brigitte, and Strack, Fritz. 1985. “Response Scales: Effects of Category Range on Reported Behavior and Comparative Judgments.” Public Opinion Quarterly 49: 388–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suls, Jerry M., and Wheeler, Ladd. 2000. Handbook of Social Comparison: Theory and Research. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1835. Democracy in America. trans. Reeve, Henry. South Australia: The University of Adelaide.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1856. The Old Regime and the Revolution. trans. by Bonner, John. New York: Harper Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Iain, and Smith, Heather J.. 2001. Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development and Integration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Healy supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Healy supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 360.5 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.