The effects of remittances on support for democracy in Africa: Are remittances a curse or a blessing?
Maty Konte
#2015-008
We examine the effect of remittances on the legitimacy of democracy in
Africa, testing whether remittance recipients are less likely to support
democracy than are non-recipients. We hypothesise that the effect of
remittances on support for democracy varies across groups of individuals
sharing similar but unobserved background characteristics. Using the
Afrobarometer surveys, we try to find out whether the respondents fall
into different hidden clusters in such a way that the effect of
remittances on the degree of support for democracy depends on the
cluster. Our results support that remittances may be a curse for the
degree of endorsement and support for democracy depending on the cluster
of individuals that we consider. The analysis of the probability of
being in the remittance curse cluster indicates that the perception of
national priorities plays an important role. Indeed, people who attest
that freedom and rights are the main national priorities have a lower
probability of belonging to the remittances curse cluster than
individuals who choose national priorities that are oriented towards the
economic conditions of their country.
Key words: Migrant Remittances; Support for democracy; Multilevel
Mixture-regressions
JEL Classification: D01; F24; O55
