An Autocratic Middle Class? State Dependency and Protest in the Middle East and North Africa

This MENA Politics Seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Tuesday 10 March 2026 by Professor Neil Ketchley (St Antony’s College) and was chaired by Dr Maryam Alemzadeh (St Antony’s College). Does public sector employment make graduates less likely to join anti-regime protests? Recent scholarship

argues yes, with consequences for bottom-up democratization in late-developing economies with expansive

public and higher education sectors. This paper examines whether this thesis travels to the Middle East and

North Africa (MENA). We find that well-educated public sector employees were actually more likely to join anti-

regime protests in Algeria and Egypt, while we estimate null effects for state dependency in Lebanon, Iraq,

Sudan, and Tunisia. Supplementary analyses show that educated public sector employees who protested in

Algeria – a critical case for the state-dependency argument – prioritized political rights and grievances over

economic considerations. Importantly, these preferences were not visible in surveys from the pre-protest period.

The findings put bounds on the external validity of the state middle class thesis, caution against inferring future

protest participation from attitudinal data, and identify political conditions when the state middle class may

suddenly become more protest prone.