Are protests replacing voting as mechanism to hold government accountable?
The low voter turnout in the 2021 local government elections could be because citizens have substituted protests for voting, according to a new study by Tina Fransman, a PhD student in Economics at Stellenbosch University. Working with Dr Marisa von Fintel, one of her supervisors, she explored the relationship between public service delivery, voting in elections and protest behaviour in South Africa. She constructed a unique dataset by combining data from different sources to track changes in public service delivery, voting patterns in the local and national elections between 2011 and 2019, and the location and frequency of protests in different municipalities. Her research has just appeared as a Working Paper titled Voting and protest tendencies associated with changes in service delivery (available at https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2021/wp082021).
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BER Weekly
25 Apr 2025 Budget 3.0 loading; Trump starts to walk back tariff threats and Fed bullying (for now)This week was marked by policy reversals and clarifications both in SA and abroad, as policymakers confronted the consequences of their decisions. In the US, the administration softened its previously hardline stance on tariffs and downplayed earlier critiques of the US Federal Reserve (Fed). At home, SA’s National Treasury retracted its VAT increase...
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BER Weekly
25 Apr 2025 Budget 3.0 loading; Trump starts to walk back tariff threats and Fed bullying (for now)This week was marked by policy reversals and clarifications both in SA and abroad, as policymakers confronted the consequences of their decisions. In the US, the administration softened its previously hardline stance on tariffs and downplayed earlier critiques of the US Federal Reserve (Fed). At home, SA’s National Treasury retracted its VAT increase...
Read the full issue