I came across “Aspiring for Change: A Theory of Middle Class Activism” and wanted to clear the physical version out from my cupboard and so made this note. Others may find it interesting.
The paper citation is below, but this is the abstract,
“We propose a regime change model in which people are uncertain about both the quality of a specific regime and governance in general. The poor perceive the current regime as bad, rationally infer that all governments are bad, and therefore believe mass movements are futile. The middle class are more sanguine about the prospect of good government, and believe that collective action is effective because they expect many fellow citizens to share the same view. This coordination game with incomplete information does not admit monotone equilibrium but exhibits multiple interval equilibria, where middle class people are more likely to attack the regime.”
I don’t fully understand the mathematical language.
It might be best summarised as discontent vs hope, with the suggestion that the middle classes have more hope that others will agree and join in, (the co-ordination game).
I found & made the following links,
- Aspiring for Change: A Theory of Middle Class Activism at repec.org and
- Why middle class activism surprises economists by Heng Chen at the LSE Blog
- A gemini summary of the original paper, https://gemini.google.com/share/96336355c0f4
- A gemini summary of the LSE blog https://gemini.google.com/share/19733ecc7ad3
The blog article, is a summary article written by the authors themselves to explain their own research to a broader audience (Chen, 2017).
Chen, Heng and Suen, Wing, (2017), Aspiring for Change: A Theory of Middle Class Activism, Economic Journal, 127, issue 603, p. 1318-1347, https://EconPapers.repec.org/ RePEc:wly:econjl:v:127:y:2017:i:603:p:1318-1347.