Political Instability: Governance, Perceptions of Well-Being and Mobilization

Abstract

The scholarly literature discussing political stability is vast and crosses multiple academic disciplines and three centuries. Yet, scholars have been unable to identify a coherent and empirically valid theory explaining political instability. There is a plethora of explanatory variables such as economic development, ethnic diversity, large numbers of young people, and resource dependence. These variables are associated with instability in one study, but show no relationship to instability in others. This thesis argues that political instability only occurs when elements of the population come to believe that the net benefits of violence outweigh the net benefits of the status quo. The author attempts to develop and test a parsimonious theory of political instability by examining the phenomenon in three stages: ineffective governance, a subsequent decline in well-being and then mobilization of the population. The author conducted logistic regression to examine the last stage of political instability: mobilization. The author regressed five independent variables (low well-being, recent violent conflict, governmental repression, freedom of the press and civil society) against political instability. While all variables were found to be statically significant, the risk of political instability is the greatest when both recent violent conflict and governmental repression are present. The thesis contends that recent violent conflict reduces the perceived costs of violence and governmental repression increases the perceived costs of the status quo. Thus when both these factors are present, populations may perceive that the net benefits of violence outweigh the net benefits of the status quo and engage in violence against the state.