The effects of remittances on support for democracy in Africa: Are remittances a curse or a blessing?

Maty Konte ()

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2016, vol. 44, issue 4, 1002-1022

Abstract: We examine the effect of remittances on the legitimacy of democracy in Africa, testing whether remittance recipients are less likely to support democracy than non-recipients. We hypothesize that the effect of remittances on support for democracy varies across classes (i.e., groups or subtypes) of individuals sharing similar but unobserved background characteristics. Using the Afrobarometer surveys, we try to find out whether the respondents fall into different hidden classes in such a way that the effect of remittances on the degree of support for democracy depends on the class. Our results support that remittances may be a curse for the degree of endorsement and support for democracy, depending on the class of individuals that we consider. The analysis of the probability of being in the remittance curse class indicates that the perception of national priorities plays an important role. People who attest that freedom and rights are the main national priorities have a lower probability of belonging to the remittances curse class than individuals who choose national priorities that are oriented towards the economic conditions of their country.

Keywords: Migrant remittances; Support for democracy; Multilevel mixture-regressions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 F24 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:44:y:2016:i:4:p:1002-1022

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2016.02.004

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