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Remittances and Protest in Dictatorships
Author(s) -
EscribàFolch Abel,
Meseguer Covadonga,
Wright Joseph
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/ajps.12382
Subject(s) - receipt , politics , opposition (politics) , remittance , authoritarianism , dictatorship , foreign direct investment , political science , political economy , development economics , developing country , economics , economic growth , law , democracy , accounting
Remittances—money migrant workers send back home—are the second largest source of international financial flows in developing countries. As with other sources of international finance, such as foreign direct investment and foreign aid, worker remittances shape politics in recipient countries. We examine the political consequences of remittances by exploring how they influence antigovernment protest behavior. While recent research argues that remittances have a pernicious effect on politics by contributing to authoritarian stability, we argue the opposite: Remittances increase political protest in nondemocracies by augmenting the resources available to potential political opponents. Using cross‐national data on a latent measure of antigovernment political protest, we show that remittances increase protest. To explore the mechanism linking remittances to protest, we turn to individual‐level data from eight nondemocracies in Africa to show that remittance receipt increases protest in opposition areas but not in progovernment regions.