Why Men Don’t Rebel: Evidence from the West Bank

Inspired by Gurr’s Why Men Rebel, much of the literature argues that people revolt in response economic hardship or political oppression. However, the majority of people suffering from these grievances in today’s world are not engaging in political revolt. To investigate this puzzle, this paper studies a particular environment that is well-known for economic hardship and political oppression: Palestine. The paper analyzes an original dataset of ethnographic interviews with 32 Palestinians living in the West Bank (in Arabic). About two thirds of the sample refrain from engaging in political activism, whereas the remaining third engage in political activism. The analysis first applies qualitative methods developed by Corbin and Strauss to code the interviews for daily experiences of oppression and economic hardship, as well as political activities related to these experiences. The findings identify twelve types of daily grievances, and four types of political activities. The analysis then applies computational methods to identify positive versus negative sentiment related to both daily grievances as well as political activities. As expected from existing psychological accounts of protest behavior that highlight the role of anger (SIMCA), the analysis shows that participants in political activism express negative sentiment about their daily grievances, whereas non-participants express more neutral sentiment about their experiences. Adding to psychological research on the role of perceived efficacy, the analysis moreover shows that participants express positive sentiment about their behavior, whereas non-participants express negative sentiment about political activism instead.