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
27 Jun 2025 Another setback for the GNU, but oil markets breathe a little easierThis week was marked by heightened tensions both domestically and internationally. At home, friction intensified between the two largest parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU), the ANC and the DA, following the firing of one of the DA's deputy ministers. Internationally, the US conducted airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities using...
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Upcoming Seminars
Monday 21 July 202512:00-13:00
Izak Odendaal: Old Mutual Wealth Chief Investment Strategist
Topic: "Diverging fiscal policies and what it means for markets"
12:00-13:00
Dr Neil Rankin: Ceo Of Predictive Insights & Stellenbosch University
Topic: "TBC"
12:00-13:00
Prof Willem Boshoff: Stellenbosch University
Topic: "Two competing approaches in South African competition policy: merger control and anti-cartel enforcement over the past 30 years"
BER Weekly
27 Jun 2025 Another setback for the GNU, but oil markets breathe a little easierThis week was marked by heightened tensions both domestically and internationally. At home, friction intensified between the two largest parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU), the ANC and the DA, following the firing of one of the DA's deputy ministers. Internationally, the US conducted airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities using...
Read the full issue