The Defanging Effect of Education and Autocratic Survival

Raouf Boucekkine (), Rodolphe Desbordes () and Paolo Melindi-Ghidi
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Rodolphe Desbordes: SKEMA Business School - SKEMA Business School, BCL - Bases, Corpus, Langage (UMR 7320 - UCA / CNRS) - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur

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Abstract: The modernisation theory of regime change is often perceived to be a murky paradigm, lacking theoretical or empirical foundations. In response, we clarify the links between education and regime change. More specifically, we propose that education contributes indirectly to the collapse of autocratic regimes because educated people engage in non-violent (civil) resistance that reduces the effectiveness of the security apparatus. We empirically test the validity of this ‘defanging effect' of education. We indeed find that the combination of high autocracy and high education levels tends to trigger non-violent campaigns, which in turn increases the likelihood of a regime change, often associated with political liberalisation and, to a lesser degree, democratisation.

Keywords: autocracy; civil resistance; democratisation; education; modernisation; regime change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11-15
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Working Paper: The Defanging Effect of Education and Autocratic Survival (2024)
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