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What the World’s Middle Classes Are Really Protesting
Still-smoldering protests from Egypt to Brazil have set off a race among scholars and journalists to identify the roots of this summer of discontent in the emerging world. Each major theory starts at the bottom, with the protesters on the street, and notes a common thread: young, Twitter-savvy members of a rising middle class. In this telling, the protests represent the perils of success, as growing wealth creates a class of people who have the time and financial wherewithal to demand from their leaders even more prosperity, and political freedom as well.
This is a plausible story, often well told. Yet it is a bit too familiar to be fully persuasive. The middle class has indeed been at the vanguard of protests since the French Revolution. It has played an important role in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt since May and in earlier outbreaks of unrest in a half-dozen other emerging countries since 2011. But bourgeois rage can only explain so much. The middle class has been rising for many decades; in the last 10 years, rapid economic growth has spread with rare uniformity across most nations in the emerging world. So why are protests erupting now, and in only a scattered selection of emerging countries?
Middle Middle
The middle class was not rising particularly fast in the countries recently hit by protests. According to data from the Brookings Institution, in 20 of the largest emerging nations, the middle class has grown over the last 15 years by an average of 18 percentage points to comprise a bit more than half the population. Brookings defines “middle class” individuals as those who can spend $10 to $100 a day, which should capture all the people who are newly ready to mobilize in protest. However, since 2010, protests have broken out in countries where the Brookings data identify the middle class as growing most rapidly, such as Russia, and least rapidly, such as India. The biggest protests have struck in countries where growth of the middle class is near the average: Egypt (14 percent), Brazil (19 percent), Turkey (22 percent).
There is also no clear link between the protests and dashed middle-class fortunes. Since 2008, the average growth rate in emerging nations has slowed to 4 percent from 8 percent, so virtually every new middle class has cause for disappointment. Some protest-stricken nations have seen particularly severe slowdowns, including Brazil recently and Russia before it. But others were growing faster than their emerging-world peers, including Turkey and even Egypt before the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. So why are these nations among the cauldrons of middle-class rage?
Maybe the place to start searching for a common thread is not in the streets but in the halls of power. Among the 20 largest emerging nations, the ruling party has now been in power for slightly more than eight years on average, or roughly double the average 10 years ago. Of the nine countries where the ruling party has held office for longer than eight years, there have been significant protests targeting the national leadership in at least six: Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, South Africa and India.
Of the 11 countries in which the ruling party has been in office for less than eight years, there have been major protests in only one: Egypt. And in Egypt, liberals protested against the Muslim Brotherhood for bringing back the economic stagnation and political autocracy of the previous leadership — in essence, a revolt against the character of the old dictatorship. Now, with Islamists challenging the military “coup,” the middle class feels caught in the same conflict that has long haunted Egypt.
Boring Heroes
These are revolts against the ancient regimes, revealing the peril of staying in power too long, a familiar risk since the days of Louis XVI. Often, even successful leaders have gotten complacent or overconfident, failing to enact reforms fast enough to sustain a balance of growth across different regions and classes. Eventually, enough people get fed up with the old regime that the population turns on even the giants of postwar economic development, such as Suharto in Indonesia or Mahathir Mohamed in Malaysia. In the end, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, every hero becomes a bore.
It’s not clear why so many older regimes are in power now, but the last decade was a great one for emerging economies, with rapid growth in virtually all 150 developing countries. That gave many ruling parties the momentum to stay in office. Today, as growth slows, many populations are losing patience with leaders who are not adapting to a tough post-crisis world.
In Brazil, the Workers’ Party has been in power for 10 years, and under President Dilma Rousseff follows the statist approach to development set by her predecessor, even as falling commodity prices depress growth in a commodity-dependent economy. Similarly, in Russia, protests erupted in 2011 and 2012 against Vladimir Putin and his party, motivated in part by the failure to diversify its oil-focused economy after 13 years in power. In Turkey, the issue is the overconfidence of a ruling party that is pushing the same model that has produced strong growth for the last 10 years. In South Africa, the mine strikes that first flared in 2010 remain a simmering threat to the 20-year reign of the African National Congress. In India, protests against corruption and mishandled rape cases have given voice to deep frustrations with the nine-year rule of the Congress-led coalition government.
The potential for these protests to reignite depends, at least in part, on whether people have the power to change old regimes. In genuine multiparty democracies such as India and Brazil, upcoming elections provide that opportunity. But in countries such as Russia and South Africa, where there is no clear alternative to the ruling regime, the risk of protests recurring is much greater.
If protests have been erupting primarily against older regimes, the reverse is also true: New regimes are getting a free pass from the rising middle class.
In Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria and even Pakistan, relatively fresh leaders are using their political capital to push needed reforms. In these countries, the young, the educated, the newly prosperous have no reason to tweet their friends and hit the streets. For now, they are content to watch politics unfold on TV.
10 Comments on "What the World’s Middle Classes Are Really Protesting"
Arthur on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 11:44 am
Bloomberg conveniently ‘forgets’ OWS and Teaparty on it’s own turf. And in Europe a growing part of the population has more than enough of the imposed multiculturalism and mass immigration. The Day of Reckoning will not be confined to the list of countries Bloomberg mentions.
BillT on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 12:06 pm
OWS and the Tea Party was fluff that died under the pressure of the P.S.. No backbone as they are not hurting in the right place and hard enough. Political theater to divert attention from the real issue: The creeping Police State.
TIKIMAN on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 12:11 pm
I would rather protest the government giving away free money to people who feel they don’t need to work for a living. You can hate corporation CEO’s all you want but when they give people thousands of jobs, it’s tough to hate a paycheck.
GregT on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 2:45 pm
So while the OWS and Teaparty folks rise up against corporatism and government corruption, with a population that is armed to the teeth, the Europeans will be slaughtering each other while their ‘owners’ sit back and enjoy the show.
Neither scenario seems overly optimistic, but at least one of them is focussed on the real issues. The other will only weaken the population’s ability to promote change.
A population divided, is a conquered population.
Arthur on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 5:27 pm
“the Europeans will be slaughtering each other while their ‘owners’ sit back and enjoy the show.”
The Eastern Europeans did not slaughter each other either. The politicians had to go and did not ‘enjoy the show’ at all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhTflHfPhgc
The Eastern European politicians fell because the core power that backed the bolshevik system started to stumble. It will be exactly the same with western Europe once the core multiculti power of the western system, the US, will start to stumble. Greece is only the beginning. I hope that the shift to the right will not be too extreme. But the insane idea that European civilization is going to be replaced by muslims or other third worlders, without consent of the population, is going to be corrected. Immigration will be halted.
DC on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 6:09 pm
Of course bloomberg would be stumped with why people protest. To bloomberg, un-regulated welfare capitalism is the cure to ALL ills. Just give corporations unlimited political power and subsidies, and its instant shangri-la.
Well, at least according to bloomberg. Notice they didn’t one mention what lies at the real root of a lot of it?
Growing wealth disparity. They mention parties that have been in power for decades, but they never mention the reason why most of those long-term dictatorships are in power, ie the US and elsewhere. The 1% and there corporate power put them there, and keeps them there. The power behind the throne so to speak.
To sum up, bloomberg never once mentions
-The greatest wealth disparity problem in history, esp in the US, the home of wealth from thin air.
-Corporate control of virtually ALL national govts.
-The 1%’s role in all this.
-The role of US global bankster cartels in exacerbating corruption and destruction of national economies everywhere.
Nope, instead bloomberg prefers to single out vaguely defined ‘middle-class tweeters’ as the cause of it all. Interesting omissions…..
noobtube on Mon, 29th Jul 2013 8:02 pm
The State-run media is not here to tell you the truth.
They are here to distract you and give you enemies to blame for all your problems.
And, if they can’t give you an enemy without pointing the finger back at themselves, then it is something mysterious or nebulous, like, technology or changing tastes.
PrestonSturges on Tue, 30th Jul 2013 2:01 am
The Tea Party had a millisecond of grassroots sincerity before becoming an extension of corporate America. To the extent that it’s got any of that energy left, it is in the form of a “nativist” movement, and that’s a very ugly word.
GregT on Tue, 30th Jul 2013 3:15 am
“And in Europe a growing part of the population has more than enough of the imposed multiculturalism and mass immigration”
I do not advocate hatred and intollerance at all, but if people really feel this way where you live, you better get this issue resolved soon. If you don’t you will evolve into racial, and ethnic violence. Furthermore, if I was a betting man, which I am not, my money would be on the immigrants. They have fought and died for generations, while our race has exploited, marginalized, and destroyed their cultures. They have every reason to be pissed off, and they have every reason to return the favour.
Arthur on Tue, 30th Jul 2013 11:20 am
“If you don’t you will evolve into racial, and ethnic violence. Furthermore, if I was a betting man, which I am not, my money would be on the immigrants. They have fought and died for generations, while our race has exploited, marginalized, and destroyed their cultures. They have every reason to be pissed off, and they have every reason to return the favour.”
The usual “down with us” mentality.
From wikipedia “Slavery in the United States”
“Although the international slave trade was prohibited from 1808, internal slave-trading continued apace, and the slave population would eventually peak at four million before abolition.[1][2] Of all 1,515,605 families in the 15 slave states in 1860, nearly 400,000 held slaves (roughly one in four),[3] amounting to 8% of all American families.”
These are not really spectacular numbers. Oh, and 97% of the black slaves were bought by English, Dutch and jewish slave traders… from blacks! Slavery was universal before the age of fossil fuels, everybody did it. There have been far worse attrocities in history. Slavery was abolished ca 1860 and there is such a thing as a limitation period. And what about all these billions of development aid from the West to Africa? Affirmative action? And the best benchmark of all: how many afro-Americans actually want to go back to Africa? Nobody. Roots.lol, give me a break.
“I do not advocate hatred and intollerance at all, but if people really feel this way where you live, you better get this issue resolved soon.”
It is not about yes or no ‘advocating hatred’, it is about knowing history. You should pause for a moment and consider the possibility that your naive idealism could be responsible for the next wave of inter-ethnic violence by insisting on bringing together groups of people that better should not have been brought together in the first place.
” immigrants. They have fought and died for generations, while our race has exploited, marginalized, and destroyed their cultures.”
Last time I checked the entire world is lining up to mimic the western lifestyle. That’s why I have a modicum of respect for muslims, who at least insist of leading their own lifestyle. But for the rest it is a one-way street from us to them. And about that guilt trip: the Dutch for instance were ‘exploited’ by Spanish, French, Germans and now Americans. Should I feel hatred towards any of them? Well, I don’t. Life is an endless soccer game, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.