The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource‐based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it is likely that mechanisms at both levels are interrelated. To fill this lacuna, this article examines the ways in which individual‐level grievances interact with macro‐level factors to impact on protest behaviour. In particular, it examines whether the impact of individual subjective feelings of deprivation is conditional on contextual macroeconomic and policy factors. It is found that while individual‐level relative deprivation has a direct effect on the propensity to have protested in the last year, this effect is greater under certain macroeconomic and political conditions. Both significant results for the cross‐level interactions are interpreted in terms of their role for opening up political opportunities for protest among those who feel they have been most deprived in the current crisis. These findings suggest that the interaction of the contextual and individual levels should continue to be explored in future studies in order to further clarify the mechanisms underlying protest behaviour.

Many contemporary researchers agree that group relative deprivation is a driver of political actions against outgroups. However, both relative deprivation and political actions are complex phenomena, making it important to further study this relationship in the context of other relevant variables. One such variable could be the specific outgroup. The purpose of our study was to evaluate differences in the contribution of group relative deprivation to the prediction of activist and radicalised intentions against two outgroups – Muslims and senior citizens. The multi‐group structural equation modelling was applied separately on nationally representative samples of youth from Germany (N = 1,056), Norway (N = 376) and the United Kingdom (UK) (N = 1053). Group relative deprivation exhibited a robust relationship with activist intentions after controlling for general aggression, social desirability bias, age and gender, except in the UK, where the relationship between activist intentions and relative deprivation was stronger with Muslims as the target outgroup. The relationship between relative deprivation and radicalised intentions depended on the target outgroup across countries – it was related to radicalised intentions only against Muslims. The meaning and implications of these results are briefly discussed.

This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in‐group is portrayed as being threatened by various out‐groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti‐elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, exclusionist identity framing. Finally, right‐wing political actors combine both cues and depict an even more threatening situation of the ordinary people as the in‐group. Based on social identity theory, an experimental study in 15 European countries shows that most notably the anti‐elitist identity frame has the potential to persuade voters. Additionally, relative deprivation makes recipients more susceptible to the mobilising impact of the populist identity frames.

Land expropriation, where peasants’ property rights are encroached by the state, has been recognized as a primary source of social dissension in rural China. Since the end of the last century, the Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) has provided people with a legal weapon to defend themselves against violations by state power. Drawing on the theory of relative deprivation, this paper proposes that peasants are more likely to sue the state when they feel deprived. To examine this hypothesis, we first present a case study to depict the causal process and then use quantitative research to improve the external validity of our findings. We created a novel and unique database of prefecture-level administrative litigations and relative deprivation for Poisson regression analysis. The quantitative results prove that the more peasants feel relatively deprived, the more likely they are to sue the state. Furthermore, the positive effect of relative deprivation on administrative litigations has become more significant over time, implying peasants’ growing awareness of legal resistance. This paper concludes that a critical step towards eliminating social inequity and maintaining social stability in rural China is to reduce the relative deprivation of peasants by, for example, allowing them to share in land value appreciation in the process of urbanization.

Since its inception, Pakistan has faced challenges of ethnic-nationalism from her ethnicities. State efforts to mold these diverse identities into one communal Muslim identity have been continually resisted by the different nationalities comprising Pakistan. The demands of ethno-national movements have fluctuated between independence and autonomy, depending upon the relation between the state and the respective ethnic group. Sometimes the demand for autonomy has expanded into a desire for independence, as was the case with Bengali ethnic nationalism. At other times, the desire for independence has shrunk to a demand for autonomy, as manifested by Pashtun nationalism. This shift is explicated through the relationship between the state and ethnic groups. The author analyzes this shift through the prism of Paul Brass’s instrumental theory of elite competition. The factors that contributed to the success of Bengali nationalism in achieving statehood and the failure of Baloch nationalism to do so are viewed through Ted Gurr’s concept of relative deprivation. The integration of Sindhi and Pashtun ethnic groups into the state structure is explained via Andreas Wimmer’s notion of ownership of the state.

This article elaborates relative deprivation theory to a societal level to argue that political unrest is rooted in the polarization of citizens' grievance judgments, rather than the mean level of societal grievance. Using data from twelve cross-national survey projects, it examines the relationship between citizen polarization and political protest in eighty-four democracies and semi-democracies from 1977 to 2010. The study finds that countries with more polarized citizens are more likely to experience nonviolent protest. Protests are most likely in countries where average citizen grievances are low but citizens are polarized, which is consistent with the elaborated theoretical expectations of relative deprivation theory.

Suicide is a global public health problem, but very few theories have been developed for its etiology and effective prevention. Presented in this article is a comprehensive and parsimonious theory explaining the socio-psychological mechanism prior to suicidal behavior. Strain, resulting from conflicting and competing pressures in an individual’s life, is hypothesized to precede suicide. The strain theory of suicide (STS) proposes four sources of strain leading to suicide: (1) value strain from differential values; (2) aspiration strain from the discrepancy between aspiration and reality; (3) deprivation strain from the relative deprivation, including poverty; and (4) coping strain from deficient coping skills in the face of a crisis. This new model is built on previous notions of anomie (Durkheim, 1897/1951), strain theories of deviance (Merton, 1957) and crime (Agnew, 1992), although suicide is not a major target for explanation in those theories. Future research with rigorous quantitative data needs to be conducted to further test STS on a more comprehensive level.

Not enough is known in the UK about how economic phenomena and policy changes have impacted families’ ability to feed themselves. This article employs a novel way of identifying the types of UK families at risk of food poverty over time. Applying a relative deprivation approach, it asks what counts in the UK as a socially acceptable diet that meets needs for health and social participation and how much this costs. Comparing this to actual food expenditure by different family types, between 2005 and 2013, it identifies which are spending less than expected and may be at risk of food poverty. The analysis finds the proportion has increased over time for most family types and for lone parents and large families in particular. The discussion considers findings in light of changing economic and policy contexts and the implications for policy responses of how food poverty is defined and measured.

This study examined the mediating effects of future social expectations and interpersonal distrust on the relationship between individual relative deprivation and intention to rebel. Data were gathered from 807 people from multiple occupational backgrounds in a municipality in southwest China. Structural equation modelling showed that individual relative deprivation predicted intention to rebel directly and also that it predicted intention to rebel indirectly via negative future social expectations, interpersonal distrust, and a chain mediating effect of negative future social expectations and interpersonal distrust. These results highlight the importance of the associations between future social expectations and interpersonal distrust with intention to rebel in people who report relative deprivation. The findings also indicate that prevention and intervention programs related to relative deprivation and intention to rebel in China are worthy of further research.

The study describes the representations of 453 Portuguese students about the present financial and economic crisis, examining the impact of the family financial situation on these representations, and the relationship between these representations and different factors likely to influence them. An initial word association task produced 2339 responses, from which 86.75% were classified into six classes by a downward hierarchical classification. Four classes (58.26% of the corpus) confirmed that the austerity measures implemented in Portugal affected the respondents with different degrees of severity: respondents described the consequences of the crisis in terms of misery, difficulties, or change, depending on their family’s income. More generally, the discourses (41.73% of the corpus) pointed out the factors that were viewed as responsible for the crisis as well as the geopolitical situation of Portugal. The answers given to opinion scales revealed a consistent pattern of results: respondents with a lower family income experienced less positive emotions toward the crisis (η2 = .03, p = .007), more negative emotions, stronger feelings of vulnerability and relative deprivation that resulted from comparison with others (all η2 ≥ .05, p < .001). However, the unequal consequences of the crisis were reflected neither in differences in the respondents’ expectations about their future situation, which they foresaw without great changes, nor in their lack of willingness to participate in protest actions against the austerity measures.

These two studies are designed to evaluate the reactions of male nurses aged 45 years and older toward ageism. The goal of the first study is to test the prestigious work domain model of psychological disengagement resulting from a previous study conducted among female nurses. This model has been confirmed through path analyses conducted on a sample of 236 male nurse technicians; by the same token, it has been shown to apply in the case of lower-status employees working in a prestigious field. In particular, the more a male nurse aged 45 and older experiences relative personal deprivation, the more he discredits feedback from his co-workers and superiors; such discrediting, in turn, leads to devaluation of the domain of work, which in turn lowers self-esteem. The goal of the second study is three-fold, namely: (a) testing the disengagement model among 419 male nurse clinicians; (b) extending this model through the addition of ageist communication as a variable triggering personal relative deprivation; and (c) constructing a scale of ageist communication. Path analyses have again confirmed that the way a domain is appreciated influences the negative impact that devaluation can produce on self-esteem, regardless of the gender or status of the employee working in that field. In addition, these results demonstrate the central role played by communication in the workplace as a vehicle of ageism and as a precursor of ageing employees' discomfort. The discussion covers the implications of ageing employees' reactions toward ageism as well as the consequences of depreciatory language and exclusionary communication practices in the workplace.

This article demonstrates that among violent Islamists engineers with a degree, individuals with an engineering education are three to four times more frequent than we would expect given the share of engineers among university students in Islamic countries. We then test a number of hypotheses to account for this phenomenon. We argue that a combination of two factors – engineers’ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and mindset – is the most plausible explanation.