Carrot or stick? Redistributive transfers versus policing in contexts of civil unrest

Recurrent episodes of civil unrest significantly reduce the potential for economic growth and poverty reduction. Yet the economics literature offers little understanding of what triggers civil unrest in society and how to prevent it. This paper provides a theoretical analysis in a dynamic setting of the merits of redistributive transfers in preventing the onset of (and reducing) civil unrest and compare it with policies of more direct intervention such as the use of police. We present empirical evidence for a panel of Indian states, where conflict, transfers and policing are treated as endogenous variables. Our empirical results show, in the mediumterm, redistributive transfers are both a more successful and cost-effective means to reduce civil unrest. Policing is at best a short-term strategy. In the longer term, it may trigger further social discontent.Transfers, policing, conflict, unrest, India, panel data

A Universal Model of Global Civil Unrest

Civil unrest is a powerful form of collective human dynamics, which has led to major transitions of societies in modern history. The study of collective human dynamics, including collective aggression, has been the focus of much discussion in the context of modeling and identification of universal patterns of behavior. In contrast, the possibility that civil unrest activities, across countries and over long time periods, are governed by universal mechanisms has not been explored. Here, we analyze records of civil unrest of 170 countries during the period 1919-2008. We demonstrate that the distributions of the number of unrest events per year are robustly reproduced by a nonlinear, spatially extended dynamical model, which reflects the spread of civil disorder between geographic regions connected through social and communication networks. The results also expose the similarity between global social instability and the dynamics of natural hazards and epidemics.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Phase Transitions of Civil Unrest across Countries and Time

Phase transitions, characterized by abrupt shifts between macroscopic patterns of organization, are ubiquitous in complex systems. Despite considerable research in the physical and natural sciences, the empirical study of this phenomenon in societal systems is relatively underdeveloped. The goal of this study is to explore whether the dynamics of collective civil unrest can be plausibly characterized as a sequence of recurrent phase shifts, with each phase having measurable and identifiable latent characteristics. Building on previous efforts to characterize civil unrest as a self-organized critical system, we introduce a macro-level statistical model of civil unrest and evaluate its plausibility using a comprehensive dataset of civil unrest events in 170 countries from 1946 to 2017. Our findings demonstrate that the macro-level phase model effectively captures the characteristics of civil unrest data from diverse countries globally and that universal mechanisms may underlie certain aspects of the dynamics of civil unrest. We also introduce a scale to quantify a country's long-term unrest per unit of time and show that civil unrest events tend to cluster geographically, with the magnitude of civil unrest concentrated in specific regions. Our approach has the potential to identify and measure phase transitions in various collective human phenomena beyond civil unrest, contributing to a better understanding of complex social systems.Comment: Main paper (57 pages); Supporting Information (144 pages) will be available upon request. To appear in npj Complexit

Tackling Civil Unrest: Policing or Redistribution?

There is much evidence to suggest that economic and social factors are major causes of civil unrest. However, governments often resort to the use of police and military to tackle such upheavals, rather than using policies that directly address the causes of discontent. This briefing uses data from India to compare the effectiveness of redistributive transfers and policing in reducing conflict. It finds that transfers have a significant effect on the prevention and reduction of civil unrest, particularly in the medium term. While policing reduces conflict in the short term, the continued use of police has either inconsequential effects, or even leads to increases in rioting. These findings have important lessons for other countries where social cohesion breaks frequently, but large-scale conflict may be avoidable.Transfers, policing, conflict, unrest, India

The Majority Report - Can we use big data to secure a better future?

With the widely adopted use of social media, it now becomes a common platform for calling supporters for civil unrest events. Despite the noble aims of these civil unrest events, sometimes these events might turn violent and disturb the daily lives of the general public. This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework regarding the study of using online social media data to predict offline civil unrest events. We propose to use time-series metrics as the prediction attributes instead of analyzing message contents because the message contents on social media are usually noisy, informal and not so easy to interpret. In the case of a data set containing both civil unrest event dates and normal dates, we found that it contains many more samples from the normal dates class than from the civil unrest event dates class. Thus, creating an imbalanced class problem. We showed using accuracy as the performance metrics could be misleading as civil unrest events were the minority class. Thus, we suggest to use additional tactics to handle the imbalanced class prediction problem. We propose to use a combination of oversampling the minority class and using feature selection techniques to tackle the imbalanced class problem. The current results demonstrate that use of time-series metrics to predict civil unrest events is a possible solution to the problems of handling the noise and unstructured format of social media data contents in the process of analysis and predictions. In addition, we have showed that the combination of special techniques to handle imbalanced class outperformed other classifiers without using such techniques.published_or_final_versio

Carrot or stick? : redistributive transfers versus policing in contexts of civil unrest

Recurrent episodes of civil unrest significantly reduce the potential for economic growth and poverty reduction. Yet the economics literature offers little understanding of what triggers civil unrest in society and how to prevent it. This paper provides a theoretical analysis in a dynamic setting of the merits of redistributive transfers in preventing the onset of (and reducing) civil unrest and compare it with policies of more direct intervention such as the use of police. We present empirical evidence for a panel of Indian states, where conflict, transfers and policing are treated as endogenous variables. Our empirical results show, in the medium-term, redistributive transfers are both a more successful and cost-effective means to reduce civil unrest. Policing is at best a short-term strategy. In the longer term, it may trigger further social discontent. Keywords: transfers; policing; conflict; unrest, India; panel data

Civil unrest and herding behavior: evidence in an emerging market

This investigation is the first to analyze how civil unrest impacts herding behavior in an emerging economy. Using series of prices and daily traded volumes of the companies that make up the IGPA of the Santiago Stock Exchange between 2010 and 2020, it was found that civil unrest causes reverse herding behavior in the Chilean stock market. Thus, herding behavior and inverse herding behavior are more complex behaviors than the financial literature has reported to date, especially in a period of civil unrest. Different robustness tests support the findings

Civil Unrest in North Africa – Risks for Natural Gas Supply?

The uprising and military confrontation in Libya that began in February 2011 has led to disruptions of gas supplies to Europe. An analysis of how Europe has compensated for these missing gas volumes shows that this situation has not affected security of supply. However, this situation would change if the North African uprising were to spread to Algeria. Since Algeria is a much more important gas supplier to Europe than is Libya, more severe consequences would be likely. Applying a natural gas infrastructure model, we investigate the impact of supplier disruptions from both countries for a summer and winter period. Our analysis shows that disruptions in the low-demand summer months could be compensated for, mainly by LNG imports. An investigation of a similar situation at the beginning of the winter shows that security of supply would be severely compromised and that disruptions to Italian consumers would be unavoidable.Natural gas; security of supply; network modelling; North Africa

The quiet dangers of civilized rage: surveying the punitive aftermath of England's 2011 riots

This article considers the state’s punitive response to the civil unrest that swept across England in August 2011. Surveying measures taken by police, courts, and politicians—including lengthy prison sentences, violent police raids, increased surveillance, and proposals for new benefit sanctions—the article highlights the targeting of disaffected young people, impoverished neighborhoods, and racialized communities. Considering these measures alongside the accompanying political rhetoric, the article argues that the state’s actions worked to depoliticize the riots and generate a narrative of blame that worked to rationalize the state’s own vindictive violence

Do Government Transfers Reduce Conflict?

How can we mitigate civil unrest before it results in the breakdown of social order? Not all forms of civil unrest escalate into violence, but why do some deteriorate and others do not? Social conflicts have been solved through fiscal policy and the provision of public goods and services over the centuries. Data from India, too, show government expenditure on social services has had a significant effect on reducing riots across the country. These findings have important lessons for other countries where social order breaks down frequently, but large-scale conflict may be avoidable.UK Department for International Developmen