Austerity and Anti-Systemic Protest: Bringing Hardships Back In

Multimodel inference is used to develop causal models of anti-systemic austerity protest during the 1990-2000 period in Latin America. Four high-protest, semi-peripheral countries (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela) were chosen for the analysis. Causal models were first developed and tested in Mexico and then cross-validated on Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. Indexes of IMF pressure, Short-term hardship, Long-term Hardship, Globalization, Civil Liberties and National Social Investment were developed in addition to an index of Austerity Protest. The protest index was developed using careful coding and cross checking of newspaper accounts while the other indexes were largely derived from World Bank Development Indicators and other sources. Indexes were tested for reliability and validity. Causal models for each country were developed and subjected to intensive testing of assumptions. The country-level models (which showed a good deal of historical variability) were then combined and tested using Multimodel averaging. Multimodel path analysis showed significant paths from IMF pressure through short-term hardship to anti-systemic austerity protest. There were also significant effects of shocks to short-term hardship and protest. For two of the countries, Mexico and Venezuela, the path to protest was through long-term hardships generated by the world-system.