A Quantitative Analysis of Economic Factors of Revolutionary Destabilization: Results and Prospects

There are certain grounds for asserting that the fifth generation of revolution theories is being formed in the 21st century. The main distinguishing features of the new generation of theories of revolution seem to be the reliance on global databases of revolutionary events, the widespread use of modern methods of quantitative analysis, and the fundamental idea that armed and unarmed revolutionary events are characterized by fundamentally different factors, structure and consequences. At the same time, revolutions / maximalist campaigns are understood as “series of observable, continuous, targeted mass tactics pursuing fundamental changes in the political order: regime change or national self-determination” (E. Chenoweth). This article opens a series of reviews of the main concrete results obtained within the research of this generation, which opens with an analysis of the economic factors of revolutionary destabilization identified within the framework of this approach. Quantitative cross-national studies of the economic factors of revolutionary destabilization carried out to date (which we refer to as the fifth generation of studies of revolutions) show that the same economic factors can have very different effects on the likelihood of the outbreak of armed uprisings, on the one hand, and unarmed revolutionary actions, on the other. These studies show that the likelihood of unarmed revolutionary uprisings is higher in middle income countries without oil revenues, against the backdrop of rapidly rising food prices (whereas both recession and economic recovery can provoke such uprisings). On the other hand, armed uprisings are most likely in the poorest raw-material-based economies against the backdrop of an economic downturn and falling investment in fixed assets.

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