Being denied and granted social welfare and the propensity to protest

Abstract

The article examines the effects that positive and negative experiences with applying for social welfare have on the individual's propensity to protest. We investigate how being denied or granted social benefits or services as well as the interaction of these two experiences influences self-reported prospective protest behaviour. We also explore the moderating role of one's financial situation on these effects. Referring to the scholarship on protest motivations and emotions as well as on policy feedback, we hypothesise that receiving social welfare might have a different impact on the propensity to protest, depending on the other experiences people have had with the welfare state. In order to verify the hypotheses, we use survey data from nine European countries, gathered within the LIVEWHAT project. One of the major findings is that, although both being denied and being granted benefits or service positively affect the propensity to protest, the experience of receiving benefits moderates the impact of being denied benefit/service on prospective protesting among those living in poverty.

Determinants of the Arab Spring Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya: What Have We Learned?

“…Surprisingly, our finding reveals that people who feel satisfied with the social security system are more likely to participate in protests compared to those who are dissatisfied. This unfamiliar result is consistent with other studies that speak for higher levels of participation among individuals who benefit from social welfare (McCarthy and Zald 1977;Klandermans 1997;Theiss and Kurowska 2019). Ideally, receiving satisfying social welfare empowers them to take part in political activities in the form of political transition; on the contrary, dissatisfied people are helpless in bringing about political change.…”

Citizens’ experiences of a policy-ridden environment: A methodological contribution to feedback studies based on qualitative secondary analysis

“…Recently, a few studies have produced evidence that showcase how integrating the multiplicity of policy experiences refines well-established findings in the literature (Mettler, 2018 Rosenthal, 2021a; Theiss and Kurowska, 2019; Rosenthal, 2019; Bruch et al, 2010). Rosenthal’s analysis of survey data on US citizens confirms, on the one hand, previous findings on the respectively participation-enhancing and participation–depressing effect of visible universal and means-tested social policies (2021a).…”