Quantitative assessment of political fragility indices and food prices as indicators of food riots in countries
Open accessAbstract
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.
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Natalini, D., Jones, A., & Bravo, G.
- Affiliations
- Anglia Ruskin University (GB)
- Linnaeus University (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Natalini, Davide
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2015-04-14
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 4360-4385
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2112130152
- Cited by
- 31
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 11.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Anglia Ruskin Research Online (Anglia Ruskin University) (submittedVersion)
- KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Dawe Charitable Trust
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Market Dynamics and Volatility
- Keywords
- food riots, political instability, Worldwide Governance Indicators, food price index, food self-sufficiency, political stability, social unrest, food security, fragile states
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