Shall We Riot Too? The Geographical Neighbor Impact on Political Instability

Abstract

I am very grateful to three anonymous referees for useful comments which helped to improve the paper considerably.

Are genetic traits associated with riots? The political legacy of prehistorically determined genetic diversity*

“…As such, low-income societies are more likely to suffer from political instability because their citizens typically experience a lower opportunity cost of engaging in riots and revolts. Furthermore, people living in less developed economies tend to engage in violent conflicts over scarce resources due to widespread poverty and lack of (institutional) capacity to resolve internal conflicts (Blattman & Miguel, 2010;Grechyna, 2018).…”

“…According to the World Bank's definitions, political instability corresponds to the probability of a government collapse caused by contravention of established conventions (unconventional means) and/or politically motivated violence, including terrorism. Political instability also equates with political turnover/uncertainty when it comes to reflecting major changes in the government (Grechyna, 2018). More broadly, political instability refers to the probability of riots, revolutions and violence, among others.…”

“…Higher values correspond to greater political stability and absence of violence. For ease of interpretation, this index is rescaled by computing the difference between the largest value of the whole sample and each country-year observation between 1996 and 2015, following Grechyna (2018). By doing so, I obtain an internationally comparable measure of political instability, with higher values representing greater political uncertainty (Figure 1).…”

“…Moreover, the regional averages of political instability in Africa and Europe remained relatively stable between 1996 and 2015 (Figure 2). The pervasiveness and persistence of political instability justify the importance of investigating the deep roots of political unrest (Grechyna, 2018;Vu, 2021a). 5 4 Campante et al (2009) suggest that officials in politically unstable countries are more likely to misuse public resources for personal gain with the cost borne by the rest of the society.…”

“…5 The persistence of political instability can be driven by a country's fundamental (fixed) factors, including geographic endowments or historical events (Nunn, 2020;Spolaore & Wacziarg, 2013). A recent empirical analysis by Grechyna (2018) sheds light on the deep roots of political instability, focusing on the effects of geographic proximity on the cross-border diffusion of socio-political unrest. Furthermore, Vu (2021a) investigates the contribution of accumulated statehood experience from 3,500 BCE to 2000 CE to the prevalence of contemporary socio-political unrest outside the European world.…”