Inequality and Governance in Unstable Democracies - Mozambique Case Study, 2022

Bove, Margherita and Caeiro, Rute M. and Coelho, Rachel and Jones, Sam and Justino, Patricia and Barros, Henrique Pita (2024). Inequality and Governance in Unstable Democracies - Mozambique Case Study, 2022. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857260

The project is organised around three thematic areas: (i) how trust within and between social groups and towards governance institutions emerges and evolves in contexts of rising inequality; (ii) how trust in unequal societies shapes governance outcomes through two intervening factors - political behaviour and social mobilisation; and (iii) the pathways through which changes in such intervening factors may sometimes result in inclusive governance outcomes, but in the breakdown of governance at other times. Each of these areas will incorporate detailed theoretical and empirical analyses at the subnational level in four countries - Colombia, Mozambique, Pakistan and Spain - affected by rising inequalities and characterised by unstable or strained democratic institutions.

The absence of systematic qualitative, quantitative and behavioural data has hindered progress in understanding the links between inequality, trust and governance in countries outside North America and Western Europe. The project seeks to compile a number of unexplored data sources and collect new data comparatively across these other countries in order to fulfil this critical gap. This data collection will involve: (i) comparative individual-level surveys to understand contemporaneous levels of trust, and attitudes towards formal and non-formal local governing institutions, (ii) behavioural experiments under different inequality and political contexts to better understand the formation of trust under different scenarios, (iii) indepth interviews with key political actors in government, members of social movements and citizen organisations to understand how inequalities affect perceptions of governance and strategies of political mobilisation, and (iv) detailed compilation of archival data that will allow us to better understand how inequalities and attitudes have evolved across time and how different historical junctures may shape the governance outcomes we observe today.

Data description (abstract)

Dataset and data dictionary for surveys and behavioral games conducted in 2022 with individuals from 200 villages in the provinces of Inhambane, Gaza, and Maputo Province, Mozambique.

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