Education, Neopatrimonialism and Revolutions

Raouf Boucekkine (), Rodolphe Desbordes () and Paolo Melindi-Ghidi
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Rodolphe Desbordes: SKEMA Business School-UCA, Paris, France

No 2020018, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: The occurrence of some revolutionary episodes seems initially puzzling. For example, before the ‘Arab Spring’, macroeconomic conditions were improving, the political leaders had been in power for a long time, and the autocrats had shown an apparent interest in the welfare of their population by investing in human capital. We argue that such a paradox can be solved by considering that high education levels are incompatible with the features characterising strong neopatrimonial states. We develop this intuition in a simple theoretical model and we test our prediction in a sequential empirical study of regime changes and regime breakdowns in a large panel of countries. We indeed find that a regime change is more likely in countries combining high neopatrimonialism and high education levels. Moreover, when a regime change happens under these circumstances, a revolution is the most likely type of regime breakdown. These results help to understand the ‘Arab Spring’ but are not specific to the Arab world.

Keywords: education; neopatrimonialism; regime breakdown; regime change; revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ore
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Related works:
Working Paper: Education, neopatrimonialism, and revolutions (2020)
Working Paper: Education, neopatrimonialism, and revolutions (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:2020018

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