The Defanging Effect of Education and Autocratic Survival

Raouf Boucekkine (), Rodolphe Desbordes () and Paolo Melindi-Ghidi
Additional contact information
Rodolphe Desbordes: SKEMA Business School-UCA, https://www.skema.edu/fr/facultes-et-recherche/professeurs/rodolphe-desbordes

No 2430, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

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)
JEL-codes: D74 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/sites/default/fil ... /wp_2024_-_nr_30.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Defanging Effect of Education and Autocratic Survival (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2430

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France AMU-AMSE - 5-9 Boulevard Maurice Bourdet, CS 50498 - 13205 Marseille Cedex 1. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gregory Cornu ().