Sociopolitical Destabilization Research Articles

Влияние внутриполитических факторов в различных странах на социально-политическую дестабилизацию: опыт количественного анализа

The events of the early 2000s showed that the technologies for changing power through ‘color revolutions’ mostly work in developing countries characterized, among other things, by a long period of rule of one leader. The objective of this study is to study, using quantitative methods, the existence of relationships and patterns between the duration of a leader's staying in power and the integral index of socio-political destabilization in various countries. The statistical analysis carried out showed that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the indicator of the duration of the leader’s continuous rule and the integral index of socio-political destabilization in countries that are partial autocracies. It is known ‘intermediate’ countries that are in the process of transition to modern institutional democracy (or formally striving for such a transition, declaring it) are the most vulnerable to destabilization. Our study shows that one of the factors that increase the likelihood of instability in such countries is long stay of the leader in power. It should be noted that from the point of view of political science, Russia is a developed state with a complex and well-established political culture, capable of effectively resisting attempts to destabilize by organizing ‘color revolutions’.

The Dimensions of Sociopolitical Destabilization in MENA Region in Comparative Global Perspective

Much has been written about the destabilizing factors in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) (and the Afrasian instability macrozone in general) since 2011; however, the characteristics of its destabilization dimensions have been little discussed. Our principal component analysis based on the CNTS, Global Terrorism and Center for Systemic Peace databases, shows that some MENA countries are the most violently destabilized in the entire world for the period of 1970–2018 compared to all other countries. These results are supported by the mean factor scores of the principal components of socio-political destabilization for four world-system regions for three observation periods which show that both for the 1970–2018 and post-2011 periods, the Afrasian instability macrozone in general, and the MENA region in particular, emerge as the areas with the highest mean values of bloody destabilization factor scores. Moreover, the tests conducted show that MENA is the only region where destabilization component of mass protest is associated with repressions both for the general observation period (1970–2018) and for the post-Arab Spring period (since 2011) while for other regions the correlation with the purges/repressions indicator is insignificant, albeit positive (South America and sub-Saharan Africa) or even insignificant and negative (Western Europe). This seems to imply that in the MENA region protests are much more systematically accompanied by mass repressions than in other parts of the world. On the other hand, for Sub-Saharan Africa we find the presence of a number of terrorist attacks among the significant contributors to mass protest destabilization, suggesting that mass protest destabilization in this part of the world is also of a rather special nature, with a very substantial violent component. Meanwhile, the principal component analysis of destabilization in the MENA region (considered as a semi-peripheral world-system area) in comparison with South America (another world-system area), Western Europe (considered as a part of the world-system core), and Sub-Saharan Africa (considered as a part of the world-system core) has yielded the following results. In general, we find that the highest percentage of destabilization variance is explained by the mass protest principal component for the world-system core (represented by Western Europe); on the other hand, the lowest percentage of the destabilization variance is explained by the bloody destabilization principal component precisely for this part of the world. We also find that the highest percentage of destabilization variance is explained by the bloody principal component for the world-system periphery (represented by sub-Saharan Africa); on the other hand, the lowest percentage of the destabilization variance is explained by the mass protest destabilization principal component precisely for sub-Saharan Africa. The world-system semi-periphery appears here between these poles. The MENA region (which is the core of the Afrasian instability macrozone) ranks second in terms of both mass protest and bloody destabilization, with very high levels of both (while South America occupies an intermediate position between MENA and Western Europe).

Education and Revolutionary Destabilization Risks: A Quantitative Analysis

There is a significant number of theoretical studies linking education and socio-political destabilization. At the same time, there is an almost complete absence of global quantitative cross-national studies analyzing the impact of education on the risks of revolutionary uprisings. This research is aimed to fill the existing gap. The existing literature shows that education contributes to the accumulation of human capital, develops a culture of discussion and tolerance, and makes people more susceptible to liberal democratic values. On the one hand, these factors raise the population’s expectations of and demands on the authorities. On the other hand, they increase the relative costs of participating in any type of demonstrations. In this regard, it is hypothesized that formal education enrollment: (1) will reduce the likelihood of armed revolutionary campaigns, which are associated with greater risks and uncertainty for participants, but (2) will be curvilinearly correlated to the risks of unarmed campaigns, since in the early and active stages of modernization there will be a positive relationship, while in the most developed countries it will be negative. Accordingly, it follows that education in general is negatively associated with any revolutionary actions. The analysis uses 10,350 observations (with 387 revolutionary events) from 1950 to 2019, based on extended-release NAVCO data and a combination of the Barro and Lee Education Research Project with information from the UNDP (with cross-validation on the basis of the authors’ own database). The main research methods were cross-tabulation and correlation-regression analyses with the construction of probability functions.

ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЕ ПРОЕКТИРОВАНИЕ ОБРАЗА БУДУЩЕГО КАК ФАКТОР СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ СТАБИЛЬНОСТИ РОССИИ

The article is analyzing the political projection of the image of Russia’s future as an instrument of public policy and its potential to maintain the country’s socio-political stability. The essence of political projection is investigated; the substantiation of the influence of the image of the future on socio-political stability is given; the possibility and features of projection of the image of Russia’s future are considered; the significance of the project of the image of the future is illustrated, taking the public opinion of Russians into account. The results of the study demonstrate that in the Russians’ mass consciousness, the image of the future is of hybrid character. It is characterized by partial fragmentation and indefiniteness in certain spheres of life, which increases the risks of socio-political destabilization. Based on empirical sociological information, the authors come to the conclusion that the image of the future formed in Russian society consists of a core and a periphery. Value orientation of citizens is its most stable and the least changeable element. They form the core of the image ofthe future. Depending on the influence of external and internal factors, changeability is characteristic of the peripheral components. These include citizens’ prediction of their financial situation, the level of anxiety about the future, the society’s relations with the authorities, fixing the society’s sociopsychological sentiment and states, and others. The Russians’ opinion that such concepts as “justice”, “peace”, “order”, “law” and “human rights” must be the basis for the revival of the future Russia is quite stable. The authorities can design an optimal model of the image of Russia’s future, based on attitudes and values shared and cultivated by society, by monitoring the relevant needs, interests and requests of the Russian society. Such projection should be based on the principles of science, consistency, verification and relevance in order to contribute to maintaining Russia’s socio-political stability

Promising Areas of Cooperation on Digital Security and Media Policy Between Russia and Africa

From the perspective of current political and military confrontation, many world nations are challenged to balance independence and development. It is the digital and informational defense that has raised a special attention when the world market of IT-technologies has been controlled by several big monopolies. Because different countries have faced similar problems in the sphere of digital state policy, the fresh opportunity has emerged for international cooperation that has not yet been critically assessed. Revaluating aspects of informational war in the social domain, the article places a special emphasis on education, public opinion manipulations and youth struggle. These interconnections are urgent for the Russian Federation, as they are for those African nations that have an ever-growing youth burden and national systems of education under constant attempts of reconstruction. Although the development of digital technologies is claimed to be a priority in the development of all spheres of public life in African countries, the current situation in the digital technology market is actually turning into a new kind of dependence. In the field of socio-political destabilization, this can be clearly seen while analyzing the role of social media in organizing socio-political protests in different countries of Africa, when young people become the main object of manipulation in the information space. The growth in the percentage of young people among the population exacerbates many unresolved issues of national educational systems. A decade ago the digitalization of education seemed to be a new hope for Africa. However, in practice, the success of some subsidized digital projects has shown that digitalization cannot replace development of integral education systems and exposes new challenges – access of new technologies for different levels of population, children’s Internet addiction and cyberbullying, the loss of cultural identity because of necessity to follow the requirements of sponsors. Summarizing these problems in different countries of the continent, the article highlights directions of possible cooperation that could contribute to the formation of a sustainable system of informational security including ensuring hardware and software independence, digitalization of public administration, development of alternative digital tools for social interaction, development and support of a digital educational platforms, support for an independent cultural and religious policy, online security for children and teenagers.

Islamic education in Russia: Local experience and the influence of the Middle East

The collapse of the Soviet system in the North Caucasus was accompanied by re-Islamization, which, among other things, was facilitated by growing influence of the religious and governmental actors from the Middle East. The upsurge of Islam manifested the increased demand for religious education. Some Muslims in Russia, mostly middle-age ones, and the elders, stood for restoration of pre-Soviet Islamic traditions. Others, the youth, oriented to the Middle East. In Russia non-secular schools and universities are still poorly regulated by the state, and therefore Islamic educational centers remain in the "grey zone". On the other hand, being excluded from the state-based system of public school and higher education, unregulated Islamic education in the North Caucasus may shape a seething environment for socio-political destabilization. The authors conclude that two dimensions can be distinguished in the context of the problems and challenges of the Islamic education system in Russia. The first, short-term one, is associated with the modernization of the teaching format itself. It implies introduction of general humanitarian subjects and disciplines in educational programs. As for the long-term prospects, in this case it would be possible to refer to the experience of the world's leading religious educational centers. Modern Russian Islamic educational centers may borrow its organizational model and branding strategy without hiring foreign lecturers. Eventually, the system should become a self-reproductive one under which graduates would make up a stratum of teachers, scholars and other professionals including those whose activity is not related to Islam directly.

Socio-political destabilization dynamics features in MENA monarchies before and after the Arab spring

“Arab Spring” had a large effect on the political stability of Arab republics and led to regimes overthrow in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. However, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) monarchical regimes managed to survive the period of severe turbulence. Much has been written on the problems of the “Arab Spring” effect on the trajectory of socio-political and economic development of the Arab countries since 2011, although nothing has been said on the dynamics of political destabilization of Arab monarchies as a whole and in comparison with MENA republics as well as about the features of that dynamics. So, this paper aims to fulfill this gap. Using descriptive statistics as a pilot method and CNTS, Global Terrorism and Mass Mobilization in Autocracies databases we show that the monarchies are in general more stable than non-monarchies of MENA since their independence.  The paper also demonstrates that those MENA monarchies which suffer from internal Sunni-Shia conflicts, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, possess the highest mean destabilization level among all MENA monarchies because of its “bloody” character. The most liberal parliamentary Arab monarchies like Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco have a relatively high destabilization dynamics, but they are predominantly of a mass mobilization type. Other monarchies, Oman, UAE and Qatar, demonstrate the lowest destabilization levels during the period after the “Arab Spring”. 

Populism and Protest Intensity: A Cross-National Analysis

Populist studies are increasingly interested in the effects that populism has on political systems of contemporary democracies. This article analyzes the relationship between populist parties and politicians and the intensity of political protest. Arguing that populists generate feelings of anger and outrage at the establishment politicians, develop close relationships with social movements, and instigate further polarization and resistance from the opposition, the existence of populist actors in a political system is expected to generate more political protests. Empirical testing using cross-national figures considers the case of both the prevalence of populist parties in European countries and the existence of a populist politician as the head of government in European, Latin American, and North American countries. The results testify to strong positive correlations in both cases demonstrating the potential that populism has for socio-political destabilization. However, when tests are performed in order to observe whether this relationship holds within different geographical and temporal spaces, strong negative relationships are shown with populists prior to the year 2000 and positive ones afterwards. Finally, once the ideological disposition of the populist leaders is accounted for, the results testify to a diverging pattern; whereas the populist radical right and radical left are strongly associated with increasing protests after the year 2000, in the decade prior, centrist or neoliberal populism demonstrated a significantly negative correlation with protest intensity. This is especially true of the populist radical right that tends to rise alongside mobilizations for autocracy as well as provoke mass mobilizations for democracy among the opposition.

Brand management of an innovative product of a telecommunications company

The role of the corporate branding in telecommunication market as positive attitude formation factor for innovative product within economic and sociopolitical destabilization, including variability of the competitive environment and high level of R&D activity is justified in article. Moreover, the industry characteristics of diversified products are taken into account. The place of the brand as a link between past, current and future marketing activities is interpreted, taken into account the relationship with consumers and the market reaction to the new product. The constant effort maintains of the customer loyalty is shown as obligatory activity by the telecommunication company, considering consumer awareness and change their spending power. The effective brand management for innovative products made by telecommunications companies should considered: industries characteristics; the competitiveness level among manufactured goods within telecommunication industry; companies investment opportunities for brand formation and development. The common types of interconnection between brand management strategy and innovative telecommunication products were expended. Moreover, the matrix related was built and interconnection types were characterized. The main goals of innovation brand management are justified considering the peculiarities of the telecommunication services market and the type of market environment in accordance with level of product and company novelty. Furthermore, the complex of marketing tools for each alternative was recommended which complement the telecommunication companies’ capabilities within Internet network. Depending on the market situation, it is advisable to apply the recommendations on effective brand management for innovative telecommunication products either inside the domestic market or to enter the foreign markets.

The constitution of the Russian Federation and constitutional identity in the context of global changes

Today we are witnesses and participants in a historic event that is very important for Russia – preparation and adoption of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, reflecting both a legal identity and a vast long-term experience of the constitutional development of the Russian state with due consideration to the opinion of various strata of the population and extensive public discussion. Goal of the research is to show a special role of the Constitution of the Russian Federation from the position of its supremacy in combination with the doctrine of constitutional identity, which is essentially a trend of modern globalization processes, based on the analysis of doctrinal and practical issues, laws and regulations, decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the European Court of Human Rights, and statistical data. The methodological basis of the research consists in the application of both general scientific and special methods developed in jurisprudence. During the research, the following methods of scientific knowledge played a special role: dialectical, historical, comparative law, statistical, logical, etc. A number of conclusions were drawn concerning, on the one hand, the development of a legal potential of the Constitution of the Russian Federation being a determining vector in preventing socio-political destabilization, and on the other hand, constitutional identity, in the broadest sense shown in the desire to know and formulate the own national, religious and other identities, to follow traditional family values, etc., and at the state level – prevention of violation of territorial integrity, state sovereignty, acknowledgement of constitutional and legal identity of the state.

A methodology for analyzing and forecasting sociopolitical destabilization

The article presents a methodology for the analysis of political crises meant to assess the current situation of sociopolitical (in)stability of the developing and developed societies in question, provide an inertial forecast of the developing situation in a given period, analyse threats to stability threats, and examine possible measures to counteract such threats and their likely influence on the situation. The methodology is based on modeling sociopolitical stability in the country in question with the help of an elaborate logical-mathematical model.

Russian culture and management of meaning in introduction of political influence in Ukraine

This paper investigates narratives and ideology of disinformation campaign which Russian Federation launched into information space since February 2014 when undisguised occupation of Ukraine started. At the same time world liberal democracies were also targeted. In this study we examine the role of the national history and people’s cultural self-identification in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Moscow claimed they started the disguised war against Ukraine to protect ‘people who feels a connection to Russian culture’. And this narrative was not just a casus belli, but also the important factor of country’s socio-political destabilization. Russian Federation used Russian culture affinity to raise hostilities between people. Disinformation campaign was simultaneously inciting hostility against Ukrainians at the same time portraying ‘people who feels a connection to Russian culture’ as victims. Common spoken language in Ukraine was used to incite violence and disinformation convinced that those who speak Russian are in peril. While in fact Ukrainian language and culture are country-wide suppressed after Russification period, Russian propaganda stated otherwise. Disinformation campaign was inventing new reality, distorting history and denied Ukrainian ethnocide in 20th century. This campaign brought a number of mercenaries as combatants to the east-Ukrainian battlefield and also turned a number of Russia's propaganda consumers around the world into ‘viral carriers’ of conspiracy theories.

The Effectiveness of Global Systems for Monitoring Sociopolitical Instability: A Systematic Analysis

The article provides a systematic review of the main, existing methodologies of the global monitoring and forecasting of socio-political destabilization. A systematic analysis of the correlation between the forecasts of destabilization generated by these systems and the actual levels of destabilization observed in the respective countries has been carried out. The analysis shows that the forecast, based on the assumption that the level of destabilization in each country in the following year will be proportional to the actual level of destabilization of the current year, turns out, in all cases, to be more predictive than the forecasts made on the basis of any of the considered indices of the risk of destabilization (at least for all cases when the relevant forecasts were published). At the same time, it is shown that, before the Arab Spring, the indices we considered still performed some useful function, allowing us to identify not so much countries with a high risk of destabilization as those countries with particularly low risks of this kind. However, in 2010–2011, all destabilization risk indices had a very serious failure. High index values not only turned out to be not-very-good predictors of a high degree of the actual destabilization in 2011, but also low index values turned out to be bad predictors of a low degree of actual destabilization. As a result, all destabilization risk indices in 2010/2011 showed extremely low statistically-insignificant correlations between the expected and observed levels of destabilization, which can be attributed to the anomalous wave of 2011 launched by the events of the Arab Spring. As we have shown in several ways, the predictive ability of indices had been restored to some extent, again becoming statistically significant after 2011, but it has not returned to the level observed before the Arab Spring. This confirms the conclusions of our previous work that the Arab Spring in 2011 acted as a trigger for the global phase transition, resulting in the World System changing into a qualitatively new state in which we observe some new patterns that were not taken into account by the systems developed before the Arab Spring. Thus, the existing systems of forecasting the risks of socio-political destabilization have lost the last “competitive advantages” over the method of simple extrapolation. There are grounds to believe that the pandemic of the coronavirus infection COVID-19 may lead to an additional decrease in the prognostic ability of the indices we have examined. All this, of course, suggests the need to develop a new generation of systems for forecasting the risks of socio-political destabilization.

Politicizing African urban food systems: The contradiction of food governance in Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco

The governance of urban food supply in Morocco is subject to deep contradictions. It involves actors with diversified interests that are guided by sometimes divergent rationale. One of the main contradictions sets “modernization” against conservatism. The former aims to create new “westernized” wholesale markets, “upgrade” food products for export, traceability and safety, reduce the informal food trade and support large retailers. The latter aims to prevent sociopolitical destabilization, such as the risk of increasing prices, changes in the supply of food to keep up with demand and social unrest involving merchants and informal vendors.Our analysis of this contradictory situation is divided into two parts. First, we review the evolution of Morocco's food policy since independence. Then we present the main actors involved in the governance of urban food systems. We show that urban food governance is still dominated by the Ministry of the Interior, but that the decentralization process is likely to encourage modernization. In the second part, we highlight the tension between the “conservative” central actors and the “modernizing” local actors, by analysing the current controversy over the reform of the wholesale markets, a crucial issue for African urban food systems, in Casablanca and Rabat.

Relative Deprivation as a Factor of Sociopolitical Destabilization: Toward a Quantitative Comparative Analysis of the Arab Spring Events

The article analyzes relative deprivation as a possible factor of sociopolitical instability during the Arab Spring events using the methods of correlation and multiple regression analysis. In this case, relative deprivation is operationalized in two ways: (a) through the indicator of subjective feeling of happiness on the eve of the events of the Arab Spring, and (b) through the scale of decrease of the subjective feeling of happiness on the eve of the events of Arab Spring. It is shown that the change in the level of subjective feeling of happiness between 2009 and 2010 is a powerful, statistically significant predictor of the level of destabilization in Arab countries in 2011. The next most powerful predictor is the mean value of the subjective feeling of happiness in the corresponding country for 2010. At the same time, the fundamental economic indicators we tested, while controlling for them, have turned out to be extremely weak and at the same time statistically insignificant predictors of the level of sociopolitical instability in the Arab countries in 2011.

Democracy and Terrorism: A Re-analysis

The authors analyze the relationship between the type of political regime and the level of terrorist activity, with a particular emphasis on the so-called factional democracies. The key difference of factional democracies from other political regimes is the presence of polarization between opposing factions. It has been reported that political polarization transforms the conventional institutionalized political process into unconventional politics. The authors draw attention to the fact that in the existing scientific debate, there is no clear conclusion about the nature of the relationship between the type of political regime and the level of terrorist activity in the country. A literature review suggests that there is a curvilinear, U-shaped relationship between the level of terrorist activity and the type of political regime, which is consistent with the findings of previous works describing the relationship between socio-political destabilization and the type of political regime. Preliminary testing conducted by the authors indicates that factional democracies are subject to significantly more terrorist attacks than any other political regimes. While analyzing data on the level of terrorist activity, the authors address the need to split the sample into subsamples, due to the nonlinear nature of the relationship between the level of terrorist activity and GDP per capita, as well as the mean of years of schooling. The presence of a positive relationship between factional democracies and the level of terrorist activity is also verified by applying a negative binomial regression. The authors offer their own answer to the question of why so many previous studies have detected a positive correlation between democracy and terrorism. Attention is drawn to the fact that the positive relationship between democratic regime and the level of terrorist activity can be obtained due to the inclusion of factional democracies into the overall sample of democratic states. If factional democracies are excluded from the sample, the relationship between the level of terrorist activity and the democratic regime turns out to be clearly negative. The findings about the relationship between regime type and terrorist activity are replicated at the subsamples level. The general conclusion is that a factional democracy turns out to be a very strong positive predictor of high levels of terrorist activity, whereas a non-factional democracy turns out to be a statistically-significant predictor of the relatively lower levels of the intensity of terrorist attacks.

Поиски новых подходов к социокультурной интеграции мигрантов

Статья посвящена анализу основных направлений ведущихся государствами глобального Севера поисков эффективных подходов к управлению культурным разнообразием. Показано, что массовая иммиграция с глобального Юга резко усложняет культурную неоднородность принимающих обществ Севера. Последняя, в свою очередь, сопряжена с серьезными вызовами размывания их культурной идентичности, фрагментации и социально-политической дестабилизации, усиленными недавним миграционным кризисом. Угрозы дальнейшего расширения ареалов расселения и укрепления позиций выходцев из исламских стран в Европе сплетаются с рисками ее «рехристианизации» представителями южных течений христианства и распространения архаичных ценностей и практик. Доминирование белого населения европейского происхождения в США все заметнее ослабляется быстро укрупняющимися инокультурными сообществами выходцев из стран Латинской Америки и Азии. Ни ассимиляционизм, игнорирующий и подавляющий культурные различия, ни сменивший его мультикультурализм, признающий и поощряющий их, не смогли дать эффективного ответа на рост разнообразия и помочь избежать усиления территориальной сегрегации, культурной замкнутости «параллельных сообществ» и социального иждивенчества их членов. На волне критики мультикультурализма вновь возрождается ассимиляционный подход. В то же время предлагаются и новые интеграционные концепты. Омникультурализм акцентирует общность человеческой природы разных этнорасовых групп, а поликультурализм – пересечение их историй и взаимосвязи, однако практическая реализация обоих подходов может иметь лишь ограниченный и спорный эффект. Интеркультурализм, делающий ставку на перенастройку городской системы управления и общественных структур на функционирование в условиях разнообразия и налаживание снизу конструктивного межкультурного взаимодействия, уже позитивно себя зарекомендовал в локальных практиках. Вместе с тем результаты таких инициатив пока скромны и непрочны. Это делает перспективы интеркультурализма неопределенными, пока он не пройдет проверку на национальном уровне.

A Wave of Global Sociopolitical Destabilization of the 2010s: A Quantitative Analysis

ABSTRACTAfter the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011, explosive global growth was observed for the majority of indicators of sociopolitical destabilization in all parts of the World System. In order to identify the structure of this destabilization wave, we apply a series of statistical techniques such as trend analysis and t-tests to study the degrees of intensification of various instability indicators (as recorded by the Cross National Time Series database). We reveal explosive global growth in anti-government demonstrations, riots, general strikes, terrorist attacks/guerrilla warfare, and purges, as well as in the global integral index of sociopolitical destabilization. On the other hand, no statistically significant growth has been detected for assassinations and major government crises, whereas for such an important indicator of global sociopolitical destabilization, as the global number of coups and coup attempts, we find a statistically significant decrease.

Economic Development and Sociopolitical Destabilization: A Re-Analysis

Author(s): Korotayev, Andrey; Vaskin, Ilya; Bilyuga, Stanislav; Ilyin, Ilya | Abstract: Our empirical tests generally support the hypothesis that up to certain values of the average per capita income its growth tends to lead to increased risks of sociopolitical destabilization, and only in the upper range of this indicator its growth tends to be associated with the decrease of sociopolitical destabilization risks. However, our analysis has shown that for various indices of sociopolitical destabilization this curvilinear relationship can be quite different in some important details. On the other hand, we detect the presence of a very important exception. We show that the relationship between per capita GDP and the intensity of coups and coup attempts is not curvilinear; in this case we are rather dealing with a pronounced negative correlation; a particularly strong negative correlation is observed between this index and the logarithm of GDP per capita. We demonstrate that this fact makes the abovementioned bell-shaped relationship with respect to the integral index of sociopolitical destabilization considerably less distinct and makes a very significant contribution to the formation of its asymmetry (when the negative correlation between per capita GDP and sociopolitical destabilization among the richer countries looks much stronger than the positive correlation among poorer countries). However, our analysis shows that for all the other indices of sociopolitical destabilization we do witness the bell-shaped relationship. On the other hand, for example, in relation to such indices, as political strikes, riots and anti-government demonstrations we deal with such an asymmetry that is directly opposite to that mentioned above - with such an asymmetry, when a positive correlation between GDP and instability for poorer countries is much stronger than the negative correlation for richer countries.

Безработица как предиктор социально-политической дестабилизации в странах Западной и Восточной Европы

Powerful political destabilization processes in recent years (such as Arab Spring) have brought attention to unemployment as a possibly important factor in political destabilization. However, the results of different studies, devoted to exploring the relationship between unemployment and instability, are highly contradictory with respect to the direction, strength, and significance of the detected correlations, especially in high income economies. This article examines the impact of unemployment on political destabilization in non-postCommunist (Western) and post-Communist (Eastern) Europe. We use the World Bank data on annual unemployment rates in 45 European countries, numerical values of instability indicators from the CNTS database from 1991-2014, and a modified version of linear regression analysis for this research. The results indicate a strong positive correlation between unemployment rate and sociopolitical destabilization indicators in non-post-Communist countries and a weak negative correlation in post-Communist ones. Moreover, we do not find a single positive statistically significant correlation of the unemployment rate with any of the indicators of socio-political destabilization for post-Communist countries. We see the main reason for different reactions to unemployment in the differences in the amounts, timing, and conditions for social payments. The larger the sizes of benefits and periods of payments (Western Europe), the higher the protest moods and the participation in anti-government actions. The smaller the benefits (Eastern Europe), the lower the participation in protest activities. Additional factors are constituted by the labor migration from the East to the West in Europe, which washes out “combustible material” from the East, but provokes protest activities in favor of anti-immigrant laws in the West, the “Olson-Huntington effect,” and “the patience and understanding” factor of the 1990s.