Putting Business to Work: Popular Support for Labor Policy Change under Authoritarianism

• In Event: Education, Careers, and the Politics of the Bureaucracy in Developing Countries

Brief Overview

We employ an experiment to test how Saudi citizens evaluate government policies to promote private-sector employment. Our findings show a political benefit to “populist” appeals when rulers prioritize mass concerns over the preferences of elites.

Author

• Andrew M Leber, Harvard University