How Remittance Receipt Affects Attitudes and Actions in the MENA Region

• In Event: Political Behavior in the Middle East

Abstract

There has been great debate in the remittances literature as to how they affect democracy and political engagement. While some scholars have found that remittances are associated with greater political engagement and democratizing norms, others have argued that they instead promote political apathy. At the same time, little literature has addressed directly the individual-level causal mechanism that links remittance receipt with either outcome. This paper contributes to this important gap by testing individual-level arguments about the effects of remittance receipt. I posit two theories that encompass these disparate findings, norm diffusion theory and rentier society theory, and test them against each other using two sets of surveys conducted in the Middle East and North Africa between 2010-2011 and 2012-2014. I find that remittance receipt is not significantly associated with either pro-democracy attitudes or behaviors. Remittance receipt does increase the likelihood of participation in protest, but this is not linked to support for democracy, undermining the causal logic of norm diffusion theory. Additionally, I find that the total value of remittances a country receives has significant effects on support for democracy and participation, but that these effects differ over time. The paper also discusses possible conditioning effects and outlines paths for further research.

Author

• Nadia Eldemerdash, University of Nevada Las Vegas