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63 J. Conflict Resol. 3 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr63 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Journal of Conflict Resolution 2019, Vol. 63(l) 3-30 Ei D The Author(s) 2017 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Education and M ass DOI: 10.177/00220027,721394 journals.sagepub.com/home/icr Protest in Africa OSAGE Sirianne DahlumI and Tore Wig2 Abstract Does a more educated population spur regime-challenging mass protest? It is com- monly argued that educated individuals are more likely to collectively challenge gov- ernments through protests and that this may explain why education is associated with democratization. While many studies have investigated education's effect on con- ventional political participation (voting, petitioning, etc.), it is not known whether education levels affect contentious mass protest. This article argues that education increases the frequency of mass protest, by alleviating collective-action problems and motivating mass opposition, particularly in autocracies. These links are investigated at the subnational level in Africa, by mapping over 600,000 survey respondents to spatialized protest-event data. We present evidence that areas with more educated populations have higher levels of protest activity, and we find mixed evidence con- sistent with both opportunity- and grievance-related mechanisms driving this rela- tionship. We proceed to identify the causal effect of education by using the location of colonial-era Christian missions to instrument for local education levels. Keywords rebellion, democratization, civil wars, internal armed conflict The notion that education increases a population's tendency to initiate mass upris- ings against existing institutions is popular. University campuses have often served iDepartment of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 2Peace Research Institute Oslo, PRIO, Oslo, Norway Corresponding Author: Sirianne Dahlum, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo 085 1, Norway. Email: s.a.dahlum@stv.uio.no