Food Security and Political Stability
Year: 2013
Type: preprint
Abstract: Food insecurity has been widely claimed as a causal factor behind recent revolutions and political uprisings such as the Arab spring. However, although there are strong, intuitive, reasons to believe that food insecurity poses a severe challenge to the stability of political systems and the elites hold on power, such popular claims and anecdotal evidence have rarely been evaluated in empirical research. That is, although the literature on revolutions and civil conflict is vast, few if any studies have focused explicitly or systematically on the effects of food insecurity on political stability and the workings of political institutions in Africa. This study should be seen as an attempt to address this gap as it sets out to investigate the issue empirically by a statistical analysis using a unique dataset including various governance indices as well as food security indicators from the United Nations.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Martin Sjöstedt
Institution: University of Gothenburg
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2344299794