The Effect of the Arab Spring on Preferences for Redistribution in Egypt

• Author: Bilal El Rafhi,Alexandre Volle
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12446
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020

© 2019 International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

875

THE EFFECT OF THE ARAB SPRING ON PREFERENCES FOR

REDISTRIBUTION IN EGYPT

By Bilal El Rafhi* and alExandRE VollE

CEE-M, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, INRA, SupAgro

This paper investigates the effect of the revolution that occurred in January 2011 in Egypt on the

demand for redistribution in that country, which has drastically increased since that period. This shock

has been an important event, enhancing freedom and the political structure. In a first step, taking into

account the main determinants of preferences for redistribution in the literature, our results differ,

showing a positive impact of religion and a negative impact of altruistic attitudes. In a second step, we

rely on a diff-in-diff approach to estimate the effect of the revolution, using three similar countries as

a control group. We find that Egyptians became much more favorable to redistribution after the Arab

Spring. Moreover, the revolution effect is stronger for the poorest people and those who are interested

in politics.

JEL Codes: H23, D74

Keywords: redistributive preferences, revolution, Arab Spring, freedom, political situation

1. intRoduction

The attitude toward differences in incomes—like a large set of preferences—

has always encompassed an important political dimension. The usual practice in

explaining the different levels of support for redistribution across countries and

over time is to look principally for economic indicators. Nevertheless, several

papers have stressed the importance of political institutions in shaping a large set

of citizen preferences: Schläpfer etal. (2008) have shown how political institutions

participate in shaping citizen preferences for public goods, while Druckman and

Lupia (2000), in turn, have described the literature clarifying how parties and cam-

paigns affect political preferences. Madestam and Yanagizawa-Drott (2012) have

shown how a political and social event such as the Fourth of July celebrations in

the United States (U.S.) impacts individual political preferences. On the side of

preferences for redistribution, there is little empirical evidence exploring the

Note: We are grateful to Brice Magdalou for his insightful comments and suggestions. We thank

Emmanuelle Lavaine, the Editor, and two anonymous referees for useful comments on previous ver-

sions. This paper forms part of the research project RediPref (Contract ANR-15-CE26-0004) of the

French National Agency for Research (ANR), financial support from which is gratefully

acknowledged.

*Correspondence to: Bilal El Rafhi, CEE-M, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, INRA, SupAgro,

Montpellier, France (bilal.el-rafhi@umontpellier.fr).

Review of Income and Wealth

Series 66, Number 4, December 2020

DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12446

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Review of Income and Wealth, Series 66, Number 4, December 2020

876

© 2019 International Association for Research in Income and Wealth

relationship between the political context and formation of support for

redistribution.1

This paper explores the reasons for the considerable shift in individual atti-

tudes toward redistribution in Egypt following the 2011 Egyptian revolution,

when—in a very short period of time—major changes to the political and freedom

scenes occurred. We rely on World Values Survey data to track the demand for

redistribution and to capture the impact of the revolution by controlling the effect

of time for the appropriate factors. We see in Figure 1 that the distribution of

the variable presenting the demand for redistribution changed drastically between

the two periods. Based on World Values Survey (WVS) data, 22 percent of the

Egyptian population was in favor of redistribution in 2008; this percentage rose

to 59 percent in 2012. The January 25 revolution was part of the Arab Spring, a

revolutionary wave bearing several democratic ideas that started on December 17,

2010 in Tunisia and spread in different forms to many Arab countries, among them

Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon. In Egypt, where the most

popular slogan was “Bread, freedom, social justice,” the revolution succeeded, the

political regime changed, and many shifts occurred at the levels of freedom and

politics.

Along with studying the change in redistributive attitudes following the revo-

lution, we examine—in a holistic way—the structure of the determinants of these

attitudes in Egypt and in some other Arab countries, especially compared to the

Occident. While the comparison between Europe and the U.S. was the prevailing

one until recently (Alesina and Angeletos, 2003; Alesina etal., 2001), few studies

take into account the specificities of other regions in the world (for a comparison

of China and Japan, see Iida, 2015). This paper is the first, to the best of our

knowledge, to explore the subject of demand for redistribution within the Middle

East and North Africa (MENA) region. The Arab world has some characteristics

differentiating it from the developed countries usually studied. In the first place,

regarding the political situation, Arab countries are considered to this day the

most repressive regimes in the world, always having the worst rankings in all free-

dom components (Elbadawi and Makdisi, 2010).2 In the second place, the whole

structure of Arab culture has many specificities, notably in aspects such as the

particular place of religion, the relation between citizens and government, and the

vital role of charitable organizations—all of which could contribute to shaping

social preferences differently from other well-studied developed countries (Teti

etal., 2017).

Our keys findings are as follows. The increasing Egyptian support for redistri-

bution a year and half after the revolution is not explained by any of the classical

determinants that we control for, which asserts the role of the political landscape

and the freedom situation on the formation of preferences for redistribution.

Through a difference-in-differences (hereinafter, “diff-in-diff”) approach taking

into account three countries sharing important characteristics with Egypt, we

1For example, Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007) have examined the impact of the political

regime on preferences for redistribution by exploiting the effect of living under the communist regime

in East Germany.

2See also the 2018 Freedom House report at https ://freed omhou se.org/sites/ defau lt/files/ FH_

FITW_Report_2018_Final_Singl ePage.pdf (accessed July 15, 2019).