SubsidyRisk – The Political Risks of Subsidy Reform in the MENA region
| Do attempts to reform food and energy subsidies cause protests and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? MENA governments have dreaded touching long-standing subsidy schemes, fearing that reforms could lead to regime-threatening unrest, like in Iran in 2019. But the assumption that subsidy reform is politically highly destabilising has not yet been systematically tested. It is also unclear whether the type, timing, and framing of reforms, or the use of compensatory measures, could have mitigating effects. We will address this gap by carrying out a quantitative study testing the hypothesis that subsidy reforms cause protests and political instability. By ascertaining whether subsidy reforms cause protests and political instability, we aim to improve our understanding of the relationship between social and fiscal policy, popular mobilisation, and political stability. To conduct our analysis, we will create a new, publicly available dataset of all subsidy reforms in the MENA region stretching from 1975 to 2021. In combination with protest event data, we assess whether, and if so, which type of subsidy reforms are likely to trigger popular mobilisation and political instability. The first phase of the project is supported by a grant from MENA SP (https://www.menasp.com) |
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