Citizens' support for Economic Reforms in Sub‐Saharan Africa

• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12136
• Author: Heather Congdon Fors
• Date: 01 September 2016

CITIZENS’ SUPPORT FOR ECONOMIC REFORMS IN

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

HEATHER CONGDON FORS*

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence citizens’ support for costly

economic reforms in sub-Saharan Africa. This is relevant for several reasons, but the most

obvious perhaps is that economic reform will be difficult if faced by strong resistance from citi-

zens. In this paper, individual data from Round 4 of the Afrobarometer surveys is used to investi-

gate how support for economic reforms is influenced by factors falling under the following broad

categories: (i) Economic variables; (ii) group identity and fairness variab les; (iii) Institutional and

state/government variables; (iv) Demographic and control variables. An individual’s trust in the

president and the belief that the government manages the economy well are two of the most sig-

nificant and robust factors. This is in keeping with the results found in Williamson (The Political

Economy of Policy Reform, Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, 1994).

Another robustly significant variable is satisfaction with how democracy works in the country.

Variables related to ethnic identity and community membership also play a significant role in

support for costly economic reforms, which is in line with the theories put forward by van de

Walle (African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999. Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, New York, 2001). Females are less likely to support economic reforms, while individu-

als with higher levels of education are more likely to support economic reforms.

JEL Classification: H310, H590, O550

Keywords: Economic reform, policy, democracy, trust, Afrobarometer

1. INTRODUCTION

A number of sub-Saharan African countries began liberalising their economies from the

early 1980s and onwards, often taking part in structural adjustment programs. Despite

this, the need for economic reforms in many sub-Saharan African continues to the pres-

ent day. While there has been a great deal of research in general into the subject of eco-

nomic reforms, the focus has often been on the economic policies per se, or issues of

implementation of these policies on the part of the government. The role of citizens and

their attitudes towards economic reforms has, however, received much less attention.

Many observers and academics appear to assume by default that citizens have a negative

attitude towards economic reforms, particularly in Africa. For example, when writing

about structural adjustment programs in Africa, some authors refer to the “sheer unpop-

ularity of the programme” (Mkandawire and Olukoshi, 1995:3), while Rodrik (1996)

argues that it is a widely held view that economic reforms will generally meet with resist-

ance. Despite this, there is a lack of empirical evidence documenting whether it necessar-

ily is the case that most citizens are in fact against economic reforms in general, as well as

which factors influence popular attitudes towards reform.

* Corresponding author: Associate Senior Lecturer, University of Gothenburg, Vasagatan 1,

P.O. Box 640, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden. E-mail: heather.fors@economics.gu.se

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C2016 Economic Society of South Africa. doi: 10.1111/saje.12136

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South African Journal of Economics Vol. 84:3 September 2016

South African Journal

of Economics

The objective of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence citizens’ support

for economic reforms. This is relevant for several reasons, but the most obvious perhaps

is that economic reform will be difficult if faced by strong resistance from citizens. As

such, popular support for economic reforms could be important in determining whether

or not reforms are successful. Krueger (1993) argues that identical economic policies

instituted under identical economic conditions will result in different outcomes depend-

ing on the political strength of the government; strong governments will be successful in

implementing reforms while weak governments may find themselves undermined by

opponents who believe they can gain support among those who oppose the reform. Simi-

larly, Acemoglu et al. (2003) argue that when institutions are weak, reforms to one sector

of the economy may be offset by powerful interest groups pursuing their interests via

other channels. Ideally, the best solution would be to address the institutional weakness,

but this is not straightforward. In the short- to medium-run it may be more effective to

secure popular support for reforms. Therefore, an understanding of the factors that influ-

ence support for economic reforms could have interesting policy implications and could

further our understanding of why economic reforms are successful or not.

An overview of the theoretical and empirical literature related to potential explana-

tions for support for economic reforms is presented in Section 2 below; however, the pri-

mary focus of this paper is on exploring the empirical relationship between these

variables. Individual data from Round 4 of the Afrobarometer surveys is used to investi-

gate how support for economic reforms is influenced by a range of factors. Based on the

review of the previous research, these factors are sorted into the following broad catego-

ries: (i) Individual’s economic status; (ii) Societal factors; (iii) State and institutional fac-

tors; (iv) Demographic and control variables; (v) Contextual determinants.

The results of the baseline regressions indicate that an individual’s trust in the presi-

dent and the belief that the government manages the economy well are two of the most

significant and robust factors. This is in keeping with the results found in Williamson

(1994). Another robustly significant variable is satisfaction with how democracy works in

the country. Ethnic identity per se does not seem to have an impact on support for

reforms but rather becomes salient first when an individual perceives that their ethnic

group is treated unfairly. Older individuals and females are less likely to support eco-

nomic reforms, which may reflect these groups’ relatively weaker economic position,

while individuals with higher levels of education are more likely to support economic

reforms.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the related liter-

ature and provides a conceptualisation of the categories into which the independent vari-

ables are to be sorted, while Section 3 describes the data and methodology to be

employed. Section 4 presents the results of the empirical analysis, including a number of

robustness checks, and finally Section 5 summarises the results concludes the paper.

2. RELATED LITERATURE

The paper that is most similar to this one is that by Bratton and Mattes (2003), which

investigates support for economic reforms in seven southern African countries. Using

data from the first round of the Afrobarometer survey, the authors examine specific eco-

nomic policies, and argue that there are several theories that could be relevant for sup-

port. They refer to these as the Marxist approach, which emphasises the structure of

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