Where You Sit Is Where You Stand: Perceived (In)Equality and Demand for Democracy in Africa

Abstract

In this paper, I explore whether perceived individual inequality is associated with popular demand for democracy in 33 African countries. Past research has diverged on whether individual-level inequality should increase or decrease support for democracy, with some arguing that people might see democracy as a solution to inequality, and others that people might see it as a cause. Much of this research however uses country- level measures of inequality. Recent research however increasingly suggests that such country-level scores of inequality insufficiently capture how ordinary people perceive levels of inequality. I advance our understanding of co-variates of demand for democracy by using a perceptual measure of inequality from the Afrobarometer survey: how people feel their living situation compares to others in their country. I find that perceived relative equality is significantly associated with greater demand for democracy, while perceptions of both relative deprivation and relative advantage are significantly associated with lower democratic demand. These effects are largely significant above and beyond the effect of absolute poverty and known predictors of demand for democracy, such as free and fair elections and level of education.