Encuesta Financiera de Hogares Uruguayos 2013-2014

The analysis of research question II was primarily done with ABIII data. Firstly, a descriptive analysis showed that the employment status as such has an impact on Arab Spring protest participation. Students were notably active protesters whereas the retired and housewives took seldom part in protesting. However, there were no considerable differences between the unemployed and the employed. Hypothesis 3 similarly received scant support from regression analyses. Measured by the question about employment status, most of the countries indicated that there were no statistically significant relationships between being unemployed and protesting, this was the case also when all countries were studied together. In Libya, one of the four countries we were more interested in, the unemployed were statistically significantly less likely to protest than the employed. The relationship took the same direction in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen but was statistically insignificant.

I assumed that there might be some problems as to the validity of the question about employment status. As part of the people in the Arab economies work sporadically or work in the informal sector or might work for very low payment, the dichotomy of being unemployed or employed did not necessarily have the same relevance as in Western countries. Thus I also used income to measure employment.

Results from analyses of relative and absolute income are very close to each other. These models demonstrated that there either is no relationship between income and protesting, or if there is, the more people earned the more likely they took part in the Arab Spring

protests. Some differences appear when unemployment is operationalised with income compared to the operationalisation based on the question of employment status. Notably, according to all three data sets the sample of all countries shows that higher income predicts higher likelihood for protest participation. This relationship is statistically significant and holds both for relative and absolute income. But when the question about employment status is used, there are no statistically significant relationships in the samples of all countries. Further, in the sample of “other countries” of WVS6, the employment status question predicts that the unemployed are protesting statistically significantly more often than the employed but also there both income questions show that the higher the income the higher the protest attendance. There seem to be no apparent explanations for these differences. One easy

explanation could be that when questions about income are used, all respondents are included in the analyses and it is likely that housewives and the retired have a small income. But on the other hand, as there is a control variable for age, it should to great extent control for the lower protest participation of the retired, and as there is a control variable for gender, that should mostly take care of housewives. In addition, students are active protesters with a low income. Thus, to explain the results of income variables by the low protest participation of housewives and the retired does not sound conclusive to me. Another explanation could be that income questions simply serve as better indicators for working in the diverse labour markets of the Arab countries; this is the very reason why we tested these operationalisations too.

However, in the end, differences between the results of different operationalisations in hypothesis 3 are minor. As said, the core message of those all of them is that unemployment does not have an explicit impact on protest participation, but if there is a linkage it generally seems to be, that the unemployed protest more seldom than the employed.

Compared to hypothesis 3, in hypothesis 4 there was slightly more evidence to support the assumption that the young unemployed protest more often than the young employed. Still, in Libya the unemployed protested statistically significantly less actively than the employed, and in most samples there was no statistically significant relationship. Compared to the impact of education for example, unemployment was also here clearly a less important factor. In hypothesis 5 there were no significant differences between the educated unemployed and the educated employed in protest attendance.

As I run these models also with ABII and WVS6 data, these data sets generally confirmed results summed up above. Some modifications of the models I tested with ABIII data also supported the conceptions already presented.

In short, all these different data sets and different approaches or measurements provided scant support for the main assumption of research question III. It seems that compared to the employed, the unemployed did not generally protest more often in the Arab Spring protests nor in other occasions. Mostly there are no clear differences between them and, rather, the evidence suggests that the unemployed are less active protesters than the employed and not vice versa.

This notion of the remote influence of unemployment becomes evident, if it is compared to other socio-demographic factors, which served as control variables. Taken together, I have presented in the results and in the appendixes 95 regression models for research question II. More precisely, I have five models, three for hypothesis 3 and one for both hypotheses 4 and 5, these I have run in 19 samples and subsamples of three different data sets. All models have

had urban residence, gender, age, and education as control variables, except that education was not a control variable in hypothesis 5 when only the highly educated were included. Being unemployed has been as an explanatory variable measured in one way or another in all these models. Education has been a statistically significant factor influencing the likelihood for protest participation in 73 models out of those 76 models where it has been included and in all these 73 cases it has increased the likelihood for protest attendance as we expected. Age has been a statistically significant predictor of protest participation in more than half of the models where it has been included, and in all these cases except for two the relationship has taken the assumed direction, the younger the respondent, the more likely he or she has taken part in protests. Thus we can say that these analyses provide strong support for the proposition that youth and the high education of the population were significant factors leading to the spark of the Arab Spring.

When we then turn to the variable of our main interest, unemployment, the tone indeed changes considerably. Unemployment has been a statistically significant factor in less than one quarter of the models, but more importantly, only in five out of 95 models has

unemployment been a factor statistically significantly increasing the likelihood for protesting. In other words, far more often, models have indicated results contradictory to our hypotheses; that the unemployed are statistically significantly less likely to protest than the employed.

These figures are not necessarily fully comparable, as a model including all countries should maybe get more weight in comparison than a model run for only one single countries. Still, I think this comparison validates well the argument that whereas young age and high education have proved to be factors considerably increasing protest participation, the impact of unemployment is much lesser and much more controversial. This comparison also shows that being male has statistically significantly increased protest attendance in practically all models, and those living in urban areas have been statistically significantly more active protesters in almost half of the models.

One could suggest that if it was not the unemployed and the poor who were in the forefront of these uprisings, maybe it then was the middle class. Although only a graph, the figures calculated from ABIII data suggested that those in the highest income decile took part in the Arab Spring protests most actively. It is of course debatable in which income deciles the middle class in the Arab societies is situated. Maybe most people in the richest decile still belong to the middle class if the upper class is considered to be very thin.

At some points the results of the first research question also allow us to discuss them compared to the results of other research questions. Firstly both ACLED and SCAD data and

the survey data support the idea that more protests occur in urban or densely populated areas. This is not surprising, but still an agreeable result. As said, in Tunisia, unlike in some other countries, the unemployed were not more passive protesters compared to the employed. Tunisia also appeared to be the only country where the information available suggested that the unemployment rates are lower in urban than in rural areas. This again seems confusing at first sight. It could be assumed that in a country where the unemployment rates are lower in urban areas, the urban unemployed would be less dissatisfied with their situation. As most of the protests take place in urban areas, the unemployed could then be expected to protest more seldom. I think it is also interesting to note that this data at hand suggests that in absolute numbers the main part of the protesters were not unemployed. Even in the Arab countries with the highest unemployment rates only a minority of the total labour force are unemployed according to ILO figures. As it seems that the unemployed are not more active protesters than the population on the average, this then leads us to assume that the majority of the protesters during the Arab Spring were something else than unemployed.

As noted, out of the four separately studied countries, in Tunisia the unemployed are more active compared to the employed than elsewhere. Mainly this means that in Tunisia the unemployed are as active as the employed, while in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen they seemed rather more passive than the employed. All three data sets support this interpretation, although the differences are not substantial and relationships are often statistically insignificant.

However, also inspection of the sample of “other countries” indicates that there are

differences between countries in how active the unemployed are. This provokes us to ask why there are these disparities between countries.

When I discussed the theoretical background of the thesis, an issue which was raised was the important role labour unions often play in the mobilisation of the unemployed and the differences between countries in how labour unions take the jobless into consideration

(Chabanet & Faniel 2011: 401–402; Klandermans 2011: 45). This might offer one explanation why it has appeared that the unemployed have been more passive in some Arab countries than in others. Langhor has found that countries differed considerably as to which role the labour unions took in the Arab Spring uprisings. In Tunisia labour unions had a “key role” in the Arab Spring, in Egypt the labour mobilised forcefully towards the end of the revolt, in Yemen the role of labour unions was limited or non-existent, and in Libya Qaddafi had banned labour unions so they could not play a role there (Gelvin 2012: 71; Langhor 2014). Gelvin notes that in Tunisia labour union activists encouraged unemployed and underemployed youth to take part in the uprisings (Gelvin 2012: 56). This could indeed explain why the unemployed did

not remain passive during the Arab Spring in Tunisia and, further, why there are also other differences between countries.

7.1.3. Research question III

Results of research question III provided robust support for the hypotheses. First, the results showed that unemployed people are considerably less satisfied with their lives, which was expected following the relative deprivation theory. Secondly, the analyses proved that the unemployed are politically less active compared to the employed. This outcome was assumed based on writings of Jahoda et al. who suggested that being unemployed reduces the political interest and political activity of an individual (Jahoda et al. 1933/2002: 39–41). The results were parallel based on all data sets utilised.

7.1.4. Research question IV

In research question IV we first found that those who are less satisfied with life do not protest more actively. Actually, the results indicated that there are no differences between protest participation of unemployed and employed respondents. This contradicts the relative

deprivation theory as it suggests that it is more likely for those who feel themselves deprived to protest. There is hardly any theoretical argument stating in itself that dissatisfaction in life should not have an impact on protest participation. Instead, many have theorised that there are various other factors which have an impact on protest participation in addition to

dissatisfaction. It appears to be the most logical explanation that these other factors have an impact stronger than dissatisfaction. These other proposed factors and their relevance in this case will be discussed in the next section 7.1.5.

We also found that political activity generally is a strong predictor of protest

participation. Those who are more interested in politics and those politically more active took also more often part in the Arab Spring protests. This outcome was assumed following Schlozman & Verba, who have theorised that the political skills are critical in the process of political mobilisation (Schlozman & Verba 1979: 19–20). More precisely, it turned out that an interest in politics is the factor most often statistically significantly linked to protesting. In practice high education and being male increase protest attendance as often as the interest in politics. Also in research question IV results from alternative data sets were supportive for the results got with primary data.