Based on a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, the project follows a multi-method strategy that combines protest event data collection techniques, macro-historical methods, quantitative data analyses and qualitative content analysis.

The project will radically expand the literatures on welfare regimes, welfare state development and contentious politics, by challenging the existing paradigms dominated by structuralist perspectives, a myopic focus on Western countries, and limited data collection and analysis techniques.

This project aims to

(i) re-shape the welfare regimes literatures as the first study to classify and explain welfare systems of emerging markets as a new welfare regime

(ii) demonstrate a causal link between changes in grassroots politics and welfare policies and challenge the structuralist preponderance in the existing welfare state development literature

(iii) make a significant contribution to our empirical knowledge on contentious politics in emerging markets by creating the first cross-national databases on protest event, employing state-of-the art computer methods, such as natural language processing and machine learning, on newspaper archives.

There are two project objectives that link these existing literatures, research questions and hypothesis:

  1. Welfare Regimes (please click for further information)
  2. Welfare Development and Contentious Politics (please click for further information)