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Quantitative Assessment of Political Fragility Indices and Food Prices as Indicators of Food Riots in Countries

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posted on 2023-07-26, 16:52 authored by Davide Natalini, Aled Jones, Giangiacomo Bravo
The impact of resources on social unrest is of increasing interest to political leaders, business and civil society. Recent events have highlighted that (lack of) access to critical resources, including food, energy and water, can, in certain circumstances, lead to violent demonstrations. In this paper, we assess a number of political fragility indices to see whether they are good indicators of propensity to food riots. We found that the most accurate is the Political Instability and Absence of Violence Indicator of the Worldwide Governance Indicators by the World Bank. We compute a likelihood of experiencing a food riot for each quartile of this index. We found that the self-sufficiency of food does not seem to affect the likelihood of the occurrence of food riots, but that the level of political stability of a country does have a role. In addition, we identify a monthly and annual threshold for the Food and Agriculture Organisation Food Price Index, above which food riots in fragile states are more likely to occur.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

7

Issue number

4

Page range

4360-4385

Publication title

Sustainability

ISSN

2071-1050

Publisher

MDPI

File version

  • Published version

Language

  • eng

Report type

  • Working Paper

Legacy posted date

2015-04-16

Legacy creation date

2016-07-18

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)

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