Why Men Don’t Rebel: Anger, Fear, and Affective Valence in the West Bank

• In Event: Emotions and Political Behavior under Authoritarianism

Abstract

Inspired by Gurr’s (1970) Why Men Rebel, much of the literature argues that people revolt in response to social grievances associated with frustration and anger. Environments characterized by economic hardship or political oppression are especially known for such grievances and their related negative emotions. However, while the probability of protest might be higher in these contexts, the majority of their male and female inhabitants do not engage in revolt. The related literature suggests that this refrain is due to another negative emotion – fear. To investigate this expectation, this paper focuses on an environment that is well-known for its grievances: The Occupied Palestinian Territories. The paper analyzes an original dataset of ethnographic interviews (in Arabic) with Palestinians living in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron and East Jerusalem. These respondents, who clearly demonstrate grievances in their interviews, did not participate in collective resistance at the time of the interview – and most never did. Based on an emotion lexicon in Arabic, the paper applies sentiment analysis to investigate emotions of anger, fear, as well as overall negativity and positivity contained by the interview transcripts. The findings show that the transcripts display both emotions of fear and anger, with fear levels exceeding anger levels. The paper moreover conducts a comparative analysis, comparing the interview transcripts to Facebook entries from during the Arab Spring and speech data from Palestinian leaders.

Author

• Stephanie Dornschneider, University College Dublin