[WSMDiscuss] fewer (?) 2020 protests, according to the IMF Re: (Fwd) 2020 protests - a lull, and then an amazing uptick in many parts of the world
Patrick Bond
pbond at mail.ngo.za
Thu Feb 4 06:44:41 CET 2021
(Hmmm... /"the number of major unrest events worldwide has fallen to its
lowest level in almost five years."/
Can you trust the IMF? As the lads occasionally confess, usually in
the pub after a few beers at the end of the day, economists "torture the
data until they confess!"
The protest data they've collected for 2020 appears to incorporate
Black Lives Matter and Lebanon as simple mid-2020 once-off instances.
Apparently, the unit of analysis chosen - "% of countries experiencing
unrest" - cuts short of identifying the extent of sustained protest by
not only those activists, but also Polish and Argentine women, the
Chilean youth, Indian farmers and many others mobilising for justice.
And as for Africa, another new article below suggests that after
encouraging 2019-20 overthrows of tyrannical regimes in Algeria, Sudan
and Mali, there's sobering information from bean-counters of protests
and violence, below.)
* IMF Homepage <http://www.imf.org>
https://blogs.imf.org/2021/02/03/covids-long-shadow-social-repercussions-of-pandemics/
COVID’s Long Shadow: Social Repercussions of Pandemics
February 3, 2021
By Philip Barrett <https://blogs.imf.org/bloggers/philip-barrett/>,
Sophia Chen <https://blogs.imf.org/bloggers/sophia-chen/>, and Nan Li
<https://blogs.imf.org/bloggers/nan-li/>
In 1832, the great cholera pandemic hit Paris. In just a few months, the
disease killed 20,000 of the city’s 650,000 population. Most fatalities
occurred in the heart of the city, where many poor workers lived in
squalid conditions, drawn to Paris by the Industrial Revolution. The
spread of the disease heightened class tensions, as the rich blamed the
poor for spreading the disease and the poor thought they were being
poisoned. Animosity and anger were soon directed at the unpopular King.
The funeral of General Lamarque—pandemic victim and defender of popular
causes—spurred large anti-government demonstration on the barricaded
streets: scenes immortalized in Victor Hugo’s novel /Les Misérables/.
Historians have argued that the epidemic’s interaction with pre-existing
tensions was a principal cause of what came to be known as the Paris
Uprising of 1832, which may in turn explain
<https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300192216/epidemics-and-society>
subsequent government repression and public revolt in the French capital
in the 19^th century.
*If history is a predictor, unrest may reemerge as the pandemic eases.*
From the Plague of Justinian
<https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/coronavirus-history-plagues-feudalism-society>
and the Black Death
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rise-of-the-western-world/5F1DE6B987979B86D94DCA2C1C4FFE31>
to the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/american-pandemic-9780190238551?cc=us&lang=en&>,
history is replete with examples of disease outbreaks casting long
shadows of social repercussions: shaping politics, subverting the social
order, and some ultimately causing social unrest. Why? One possible
reason is that an epidemic can reveal or aggravate pre-existing fault
lines in society, such as inadequate social safety nets, lack of trust
in institutions, or a perception of government indifference,
incompetence, or corruption. Historically, outbreaks of contagious
diseases have also led to ethnic or religious backlashes or worsened
tensions among economic classes.
Despite ample examples, quantitative evidence on the link between
epidemics and social unrest is scant and limited to specific episodes
<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12430>. Recent IMF
staff research
<https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/01/29/Social-Repercussions-of-Pandemics-50041>
fills this gap by offering global evidence of this link in recent decades.
A key challenge for research on social unrest is identifying when events
of unrest have occurred. Although sources of information on unrest are
available, many are at low frequency or have inconsistent coverage. To
address these shortcomings, a recent IMF staff paper
<https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2020/07/17/Measuring-Social-Unrest-Using-Media-Reports-49573>
uses an index based on press coverage of social unrest to create a
Reported Social Unrest Index. This provides a consistent, monthly
measure of social unrest for 130 countries from 1985 to the present.
Spikes in the index line up very closely with narrative descriptions of
unrest in a variety of case studies, suggesting that the index captures
real events rather than shifts in media sentiment or attention.
Using this index, the IMF staff study finds that countries with more
frequent and severe epidemics also experienced greater unrest on average.
During and immediately after a pandemic, the social scarring in the form
of unrest may not show up quickly. Indeed, humanitarian crises likely
impede the communication and transportation needed to organize major
protests. Moreover, public opinion might favor cohesion and solidarity
in times of duress. In some cases, incumbent regimes may also take
advantage of an emergency to consolidate power and suppress dissent. The
COVID-19 experience is consistent with this historical pattern, so far.
In fact, the number of major unrest events worldwide has fallen to its
lowest level in almost five years. Notable exceptions include the United
States and Lebanon
<https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/MECA/Issues/2020/04/15/regional-economic-outlook-middle-east-central-asia-report>,
but even in these cases, the largest protests are related to issues that
could potentially be exacerbated, but not directly caused by COVID-19.
But looking beyond the immediate aftermath, the risk of social unrest
spikes in the longer term. Using information <https://www.cntsdata.com/>
on the types of unrest, the IMF staff study focuses on the form that
unrest typically takes after an epidemic. This analysis shows that, over
time, the risk of riots and anti-government demonstrations rises.
Furthermore, the study finds evidence of heightened risk of a major
government crisis—an event that threatens to bring down the government
and that typically occurs in the two years following a severe epidemic.
If history is a predictor, unrest may reemerge as the pandemic eases.
The threats may be bigger where the crisis exposes or exacerbates
pre-existing problems
<https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.48.1.3> such as a lack
of trust in institutions, poor governance, poverty, or inequality
<https://blogs.imf.org/2020/12/11/when-inequality-is-high-pandemics-can-fuel-social-unrest/>.
***
https://mg.co.za/africa/2021-02-01-africa-the-only-continent-where-political-violence-increased-in-2020/
Africa: The only continent where political violence increased in 2020
Clionadh Raleigh <https://mg.co.za/author/clionadh-raleigh/> Roudabeh
Kishi <https://mg.co.za/author/roudabeh-kishi/>
1 Feb 2021
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In 2020, Africa was the sole continent where political violence rose
<https://reliefweb.int/report/world/conflict-still-africa-s-biggest-challenge-2020>
relative to 2019. More than 17 200 distinct events of political violence
were recorded in 2020, resulting in over 37 600 reported fatalities;
this represents an increase of more than 4 000 events from 2019
<https://www.statista.com/statistics/298200/fatalities-due-to-one-sided-violence-in-africa/>,
and nearly 9 000 more reported fatalities. Deaths increased across all
categories of political violence, including battles, explosions and
remote violence, violence against civilians and mob violence.
The geography of violence is not starkly different than previous years.
These growth patterns of political violence in and across states
underscore that current African conflict patterns and frequency are not
due to poverty, environmental and climate factors, exclusion, ethnicity
or demographic growth. The conflicts take place in areas of various
levels of development, resource wealth, identities, demographics and
across seasons. They also occur in parts of states where the government
is well represented.
The map depicts the dominant agents engaging in political violence
across the African continent in 2020. The centralised dominance of rebel
groups in the Sahel and Somalia
<https://geog.ufl.edu/2020/02/14/the-geography-of-conflict-in-north-and-west-africa/>
is evident (in orange), in contrast to the more dispersed dominance of
political and identity militias (in blue, especially across Central
Africa. State forces (in navy), meanwhile, dominate North Africa as well
as in Ethiopia and Uganda
<https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-11-20/dozens-killed-uganda-political-violence-who-chief-accused-supporting-tigray>,
where they have prioritised securing their regimes. Mob violence,
meanwhile, dominates Southern and Western Africa, but this has long been
the trend.
The countries with the most conflicts in 2019 are the same in 2020:
Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria and Cameroon;
Libya is the sole exception. The most significant increases, in the DRC
and Nigeria, represent two distinct trends in violence across Africa —
old conflicts are not resolving, they are getting worse — and newer
conflicts are on a growth cycle of diffusing and escalating.
Violence also got worse in Mali, Cameroon, South Sudan, Mozambique,
Uganda and Ethiopia
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-conflict-explained.html>.
The motivations are varied: state forces have adopted a much heavier
hand in securing the regime in Uganda; subnational competition has
intensified in multiple areas during the ongoing period of transition in
Ethiopia; jihadi conflicts have developed new frontlines in Mali and
Mozambique; and the constant spiral of violence continues in South
Sudan, as groups outside of the narrow, elite, previous peace agreements
<https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/07/29/why-peace-agreements-south-sudan-intensify-war-economy/>contest
their terms.*
*
*Poor explanations*
These trends underline how two dominant interpretations of African
governance are equally poor explanations for violence. The first is that
African governments are often presented as weak or incapable of
preventing violence, and yet somehow they are also brutal, omnipresent
and repressive. In reality, in over one-third (18) of African countries
in 2020, state forces are the most active agent engaging in political
violence. A more complicated reality is that regimes are often held
together, and leaders kept in power, by multiple allied elites and
groups that have variable levels of subnational authority. Deviations in
subnational alignment, competition between political elites, opportunism
and poor integration with local gatekeepers creates a perfect situation
for many militias to emerge and contest authority through violence.
The second outdated interpretation concerns the dominance of rebel
groups, despite the fact that there are far fewer rebel groups active
across African states relative to other types of non-state armed groups,
such as political or identity militias. In 2020, less than 6% of all
non-state armed groups are rebels with an agenda to replace and
challenge the national government; these groups are responsible for 17%
of all political violence on the continent. Of those groups, the top
four are Islamist organisations
<https://www.diis.dk/en/research/how-transnational-jihadist-groups-are-exploiting-local-conflict-dynamics-in-western-africa>
— Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Islamic State in various spaces, and
ama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) — that together account for
nearly two-thirds (63%) of all rebel violence.
Outside of these dominant groups, rebel organisations tend to be small,
weak and insignificant to patterns of violence. They are the most active
agent engaging in political violence in only five (10%) Africa
countries. Even those that are dominant are still well outside of
discussions about governance and shared power; they are not angling for
greater rights and representation, but rather use violence to lay waste
to forms of formal authority, civilian security and political structures
that define modern states.
*Militias*
Militias are the central cause of Africa’s violence problems, especially
“local identity militias”, which account for thegreatest rise in violent
groups
<https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2019-march-2020/work-progress-africa%E2%80%99s-remaining-conflict-hotspots>.
Between 2019 and 2020, an additional 270 identity militias became active
in Africa. Their violence is often localised, situational and limited,
but it also underscores how over four times as many non-state armed
groups are active across the continent relative to state security forces.
Nigeria, South Sudan and the DRC
<https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/violence-democratic-republic-congo>
were home to the greatest rises in the number of active identity
militias between 2019 and 2020. The fact that these countries also
dominated the list of countries where violence escalated points to the
significant contribution these groups are making to conflict dynamics
within countries. These militias are the most active agent engaging in
political violence in one-quarter (11) of African countries in 2020.
The more formalised, diffuse, well-armed and funded militias
(“political” militias) often work for politicians, parties and political
interests to further their ambitions and secure their authority through
violence. These groups are popular because they allow political figures
to cede all responsibility for violence dictated by them, and militia
members are often granted impunity from their political patrons.
Lastly, mob violence rose from 2019 to 2020 by almost 70% as more
violent groups came together spontaneously, often in the form of
(perceived) vigilantism. These increased events were often in reaction
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-20/xenophobia-surges-as-covid-19-slams-south-african-economy>
to insufficient information and scapegoating in light of the Covid-19
pandemic. These mobs were the most active agent engaging in political
violence in nearly one-third (15) of African countries in 2020.
*Demonstrations*
The number of weekly peaceful protests declined
<https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-future-of-nonviolent-resistance-2/>
across Africa by nearly one-third (from 261 protest events in 2019 to
169 protest events in 2020). These protests contested lockdown measures,
elections, unemployment, economic disadvantage and constitutional
crises. This decline mirrors global trends, as a response to coronavirus
lockdown restrictions (see teal line in graph below).
However, the average number of weekly violent demonstrations
specifically increased across the continent (see brown line in graph
above). This trend was driven by significant increases in rioting in
Ethiopia, Guinea, Nigeria and Uganda.
On 1/3/2021 7:21 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
>
> (Here are pleasing results, as our team keeps up the pressure
> notwithstanding how the rules became much less fair, and the enemy far
> more wicked, at each opportunity:
>
> /COVID-19 has inevitably changed not only protests themselves, but
> also the way people protest. One need not look past stay-at-home
> restrictions and limitations on social gatherings to see that
> *protesting has become more difficult* and less popular in the
> space of a few months. However, the change is not so superficial
> when looking at the data. The graph is illustrative: the dip
> immediately at the beginning of the pandemic clearly signals
> the*initial limitations on movement and gatherings, but the trend
> resumes almost immediately. In fact, the spikes in the period from
> August to November 2020 surpass pre-pandemic levels.* This new
> spike can be attributed to a number of factors. The first and most
> obvious are protests related to the pandemic itself, with
> demonstrations against new lockdowns and regulations becoming
> increasingly popular, especially during the second wave.
> /
>
> / Another factor can be the recent emergence of *relevant
> social issues* that fall in line with the trends up to this point.
> In general, this can be explained by the acknowledgement of a lack
> or complete removal of certain rights. The*Black Lives Matter
> protests and abortion-rights protests in Poland*, for example,
> would fall under this category. In this regard, the *pandemic has
> exacerbated the level of reckoning and the anger with which people
> have taken to the streets* (where they have been able to). Poverty
> is historically a driver of anger and discontent and COVID-19 has
> certainly increased those levels./
>
> Now, add those amazing Indian farmers and Argentine feminists last
> month, and a full set of August-December ACLED figures will shoot out
> like the proverbial hockey stick. Then, bring back the
> climate-conscious kids for 2021, and the hockey stick will move up so
> fast as to knock the world's ruling elites right onto Elon Musk's next
> escape vehicle to Mars.
>
> A Davos "Great Reset"? If not, looks like a Great Global Revo lies
> ahead, at this pace, across time and space.)
>
> [Note by me: I don't know whether the data are as trustworthy as the
> large Ns indicate, not only due to the reliance upon Freedom House
> regarding democratisation trends, but because the core base comes from
> here <https://acleddata.com/curated-data-files/> -
> https://acleddata.com/curated-data-files/ - and has some big gaps,
> e.g. /Western //Europe!/ Still, trend lines are very positive
> notwithstanding predictable ideological muddiness. They also
> correspond to the "Age of Mass Protest" data from the same decade that
> were gathered about a year ago by the neocon Center for Strategic and
> International Studies
> <https://www.csis.org/analysis/age-mass-protests-understanding-escalating-global-trend>.
> Yes, it's muddy terrain.
>
> Oh, and here are mid-2020 video-lecture glances I provide
> students, for South Africa <https://vimeo.com/436759654> and for the
> global protest context <https://vimeo.com/436821421>. Updates are now
> sorely needed.]
>
> ***
>
> https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/
>
> //
>
>
> Protests and the Future of Protesting Post Covid-19
>
> * Filippo Menozzi <https://traileoni.it/author/filippo-menozzi/> and
> Katya Mavrelli <https://traileoni.it/author/katya-mavrelli/>
> * December 6, 2020 <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/06/>
>
> /In the past few years, the international scene has been widely
> dominated by large-scale social movements and protests. Worldwide,
> people have organized to demand justice, change or voice opposition
> against political decisions. In this article, we analyze how the the
> Coronavirus pandemic had a significant impact on collective action,
> social mobility and crisis resolution./
>
> From the Arab Spring of 2011 to protests against austerity in Southern
> Europe and waves of social unrest against police violence, abuse and
> racism, the international scene has been widely dominated by
> large-scale social movements and protests in the past few decades.
> Worldwide, people organize themselves, striving for change, demanding
> justice, or going against governmental decisions. Protest movements
> are surging throughout the world and more often than not dominate
> international media headlines. Yet, a life changing historical event
> such as the Coronavirus pandemic is going to have significant effects
> on collective action, social mobility and crisis resolution. To
> understand the impact of COVID-19, the first question must be what
> motivates people to mobilize and demand change. Next, it is critical
> to elucidate the trends in protesting up to the beginning of the
> latest global pandemic. Finally, a data-based analysis will show how
> protests have changed following the pandemic (and the global response
> to it) and hopefully how they will evolve in the future.
>
>
> Why Take to the Streets?
>
> It is easy to miss the bigger picture if someone focuses solely on
> triggers of protests, which differ significantly across countries and
> depending on the protest being considered. On the one hand, we often
> observe protests due to austerity measures, such as increases in the
> price of public services, cuts in public sector employment or fuel
> price hikes. On the other hand, protests have also been triggered by
> more strictly political issues, like election fraud or power struggles
> during periods of political transition. And though these triggers may
> surely serve as sparks that ignite the powder keg in any country, they
> tell us little about the fuel and the conditions needed to spread and
> sustain the fire.
>
> The theory of collective political action is one of the few testable
> theories with high explanatory power in the social sciences. Mancur
> Olson’s theory of collective action was advanced in his 1977 book /The
> Logic of Collective Action/^*^[1] *
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftn1>
> and has managed to magnetize political scientists ever since. Olson
> tries to answer the same question as this article: why do people
> participate in protests and similar activities in the first place?
> Emotional or psychological approaches are unsatisfactory, and economic
> interpretations lack the personal element that helps us decipher human
> activity, but the theory of collective action is a marriage between
> the two. Whereas Olson argues that any group attempting to provide a
> public good has troubles in doing so efficiently, for the purposes of
> this analysis we will argue that the collectivity wishes to have
> access to a certain amount of public goods and it is their
> underprovision or absence that prompts social mobility.
>
> If one takes a closer look at protests and social movement incidents
> over the past twenty years, one observes that what mobilizes people
> are public goods. These goods are made available to all by the
> government and characterized by nonrivalry and nonexcludability. This
> means that they don’t dwindle in supply as more people consume them
> and that no citizen can be excluded from their consumption. In the
> Arab Spring, people demanded democracy, good governance and the end of
> corruption. In the 2011 Greek austerity protests, demonstrators asked
> for improvements in the economic condition they were facing. In the
> 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the fight against racial injustice
> and discrimination was the center issue. Finally, during the 2020
> climate strikes and Fridays For Future protests, people of all ages
> demanded that governments no longer turned a blind eye on climate
> change. In all of these instances, the single individual has only a
> negligible impact to increase the availability of the public good.
> People may think that it is of no avail to participate, because the
> production of the public good cannot be influenced by the
> participation of a single individual, who incurs a cost simply by
> deciding to participate. And though it may seem that public goods
> provision isn’t the driving factor behind social mobility, it actually
> plays a crucial role in the mobilization of people towards a common aim.
>
> What will drive people to organize is a particularly salient issue,
> such as the case of public goods, or a situation where the
> participation of a single individual prompts a revolutionary cascade,
> to which a large majority is attracted in the end. This was the case
> in the 2011 Arab uprisings, sparked by the self-immolation of a
> Tunisian citizen in a desperate outcry against police corruption and
> violence. The gathering of a small number of people turned into a
> large-scale movement that swept through the Maghreb, prompting regime
> change. When people regard themselves as influential even in a large
> group, discontent with the extent to which a public good is provided
> is an incentive for protest participation. The situation becomes more
> severe when resource availability decreases. In areas where resources
> are scarce, protests are often ignited as a response to lack of
> resource mobilization and fair dissemination of public goods. Groups,
> demanding greater access to or control of said resources, may initiate
> small-scale calls for greater control of these goods, which in turn
> may prompt some larger-scale public action.
>
> It becomes evident, therefore, that social movements are deeply rooted
> in the provision of public goods and the realization that people will
> always demand fair access to them. Democracy, justice and a
> well-functioning economy without exploitation are integral elements of
> healthy societies, which, if absent, can prompt collective action and
> upturn any status quo, fragile or not. This is not to say that
> democracy itself is a public good (although it may be seen by some as
> such), but rather that a democracy is often synonymous with a more
> extensive provision of public goods. Autocracies are, instead, more
> reliant on the distribution of private goods to their cronies, given
> the fact that institutions in autocratic countries allow leaders to
> stay in power by simply pleasing a select few. Thus, a decrease in
> democracy is often not only paired with, but even a result of, a
> decrease in the provision of public goods. This realization comes also
> due to the fact that these public goods are most of the time provided
> exclusively by democracies, as is the case with justice, human rights
> and freedom. Hence, the role of public goods as drivers of protests
> and revolutionary cascades becomes clearer once we take into
> consideration the fact that they are present in all types of democracies.
>
> These observations are included in the Freedom House annual reports,
> which have recorded a steady decline in democratic regimes throughout
> the past decade. More specifically, they have noted that 2018 was the
> 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom, spanning across a
> variety of regions and countries. The underprovision or even absence
> of democracy as a public good allows people to reach their
> ‘revolutionary thresholds’ and demand change in governance. The
> recently published Freedom House report mentioned that 2020 is the
> 14th consecutive year of deterioration in civil rights and liberties.
> The phenomenon isn’t restricted only to typically authoritarian
> regimes, like China or Russia; it has started spreading across
> European states, like Hungary and Poland, and in Asian and Latin
> American countries, like India and Venezuela. The eruption of mass
> protests across a variety of political environments, at different
> times and under different circumstances, underscores the universal
> desire for good governance, democratic principles and respect of civil
> liberties. And because of the intensification of the ethical decay of
> democratic powers and the unchecked brutality of authoritarian
> regimes, calls for better governance are louder than ever.
>
>
> Democracy and Protests, the Story of Unrest in the Past Decade
>
> The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), represented in the
> graph below, shows that protests have increased significantly over the
> past decade. It should be noted that ACLED focuses on countries in
> Asia, Latin America and Africa, and thus lacks data points in Europe,
> the United States and Oceania. However, checking the data against
> other databases such as the Mass Mobilization Report, it can be seen
> that the global trends are unaltered by the addition of those other
> geographic locations. We have chosen to depict the ACLED data as it is
> the most complete and is often referenced in academic papers on the
> topic. The year 2019 has been called by many “the year of protests”.
> This trend can be attributed to a number of causes but the most
> evident one is related to what is, as said up to this point, the root
> cause of any protest: public goods. Public goods are most provided by
> democracies and, according to a Freedom House report^[2]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftn2>,
> democracies are certainly declining. In fact, the share of “Free”
> countries has declined by 3% over the past 10 years and, every year
> since 2006, there have been more countries with net declines in
> freedom scores than countries with net gains. The score given to
> countries takes into account the electoral process, political
> pluralism and participation, the functioning of the government, civil
> liberties, associational and organizational rights, rule of law and
> personal autonomy and individual rights^[3]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftn3>.
> All the indicators are crucial signs of the amount of public goods
> available in the country and a drop in these would certainly lead to
> additional anger and civil unrest.
>
> The very same report cites protests as relevant methods in the fight
> against the reductions of freedom, but with ambiguous results in terms
> of achievement of rights. The example of Hong Kong’s protests is
> indicative of how protests to achieve more public goods may actually
> bring about a lower freedom score as a result of the subsequent
> repression and limitations. This begs the question of whether a causal
> link can be established between a lack of democracy, and thus of
> public goods, and protests. The opposite could be true, too, with the
> most recent example of the Black Lives Matter protests showing how
> quickly certain rights, including the rights to life, can be curtailed.
>
> However, claiming that the legal way to express discontent in any
> functioning society leads to a decrease in the democratic score of a
> country is a slippery slope to walk down. If any country responds by
> removing rights to a peaceful protest, chances are they are not a
> completely free democracy to start with. Furthermore, most protests of
> the past decade can be logically connected to a recent curtailment of
> certain crucial rights to the population, which have thus led them to
> take to the streets, with the most recent example being the abortion
> protests in Poland.
>
> Thus, the trend of the past decade has been one of democratic decline
> and subsequent rise in protests, as populations have become more
> conscious of their bargaining power when acting as one.
>
> *Total number of protests since 2010*
>
>
> How Covid-19 Is Sowing the Seeds for Future Protests
>
> Having established why people protest and having seen the evident
> trend in the rise of protests, three questions must be asked in order
> to further understand the future of civil unrest, especially in light
> of the current pandemic: 1) How has COVID-19 altered, if at all, the
> trend seen up to now, 2) Has this change been driven by
> pandemic-related protests, or just an exacerbation of past trends, and
> 3) What will happen to protests once the pandemic is over?
>
> The first question is rather easy to answer at face value: COVID-19
> has inevitably changed not only protests themselves, but also the way
> people protest. One need not look past stay-at-home restrictions and
> limitations on social gatherings to see that protesting has become
> more difficult and less popular in the space of a few months. However,
> the change is not so superficial when looking at the data. The graph
> is illustrative: the dip immediately at the beginning of the pandemic
> clearly signals the initial limitations on movement and gatherings,
> but the trend resumes almost immediately. In fact, the spikes in the
> period from August to November 2020 surpass pre-pandemic levels. This
> new spike can be attributed to a number of factors. The first and most
> obvious are protests related to the pandemic itself, with
> demonstrations against new lockdowns and regulations becoming
> increasingly popular, especially during the second wave.
>
> Another factor can be the recent emergence of relevant social issues
> that fall in line with the trends up to this point. In general, this
> can be explained by the acknowledgement of a lack or complete removal
> of certain rights. The Black Lives Matter protests and abortion
> protests in Poland, for example, would fall under this category. In
> this regard, the pandemic has exacerbated the level of reckoning and
> the anger with which people have taken to the streets (where they have
> been able to). Poverty is historically a driver of anger and
> discontent and COVID-19 has certainly increased those levels.^[4]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftn4>
> From this point alone, some change in protests must be attributed to
> COVID- 19, even if it were exclusively an exacerbation of previous
> malaises.
>
> As mentioned earlier, protests against lockdowns and restrictions have
> also been relevant. However, looking at the data, the numbers are not
> as significant as previously thought. In fact, according to ACLED, the
> total number of Covid related protests is close to 700 protests. In
> comparison, the total number of protests in the same period surpasses
> 60,000. If we were to subtract the COVID-19 related protests from the
> total number of protests, the spike in the Covid period would still be
> greater than the spikes we had observed in 2019. Thus, it becomes
> evident that Covid protests per se were not responsible for the
> impressive rise that we have seen during the pandemic.
>
> *Covid-related protests since the beginning of the pandemic*
>
> Thus, we reach the final question: will the increase in protests
> continue post-COVID? All the data seen up to now leads to the same
> answer: yes. In fact, there are even more studies that seem to show
> that our post-pandemic protest world will be even more ripe with
> protests than before. Bocconi Professors Massimo Morelli and Roberto
> Censolo recently wrote a paper^[5]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftn5>
> about this very topic and highlighted what is a crucial point to
> understand the trend we are already seeing and are likely to continue
> to see: the isolation and subsequent additional stresses (poverty,
> unemployment, socio-emotional issues) placed on people during public
> health crises create “/fertile ground on which global protests may
> resurrect more aggressively once the epidemic will be over/”. On top
> of that, the causes for protest that have been already mentioned are
> not going to disappear and, as mentioned, due to the fact the pandemic
> has had such a massive impact on people, those very causes are going
> to be exacerbated.
>
> In short, the pandemic is not going to slow the steady rise in
> protests seen in the past few years. Of course, it has made a dent in
> the period in which isolation and limitations on gatherings were
> present, virtually eliminating the ability to get together for civil
> unrest. Yet, it is already sufficiently clear that its long lasting
> impact will be largely positive, supported by evidence from previous
> pandemics showing that a post-pandemic world is more prone to larger
> and more aggressive protests.
>
> We leave the readers the choice of just what issues those protests
> will be about.
>
> /Special thanks to Professor Morelli and Martina Cuneo for their
> invaluable help in guiding us through the research process and showing
> us the current trends./
>
> Countries covered by Acled data
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ^[1]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftnref1>
> Olson, Mancur. /The Logic of Collective Action/. Harvard University
> Press, 1977.
>
> ^[2]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftnref2>
> Freedom House Editors. “NEW REPORT: Freedom in the World 2020 Finds
> Established Democracies Are in Decline.
> <https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-freedom-world-2020-finds-established-democracies-are-decline>”
> /Freedom House/, 4 Mar. 2020.
>
> ^[3]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftnref3>
> Freedom House Editors. “Freedom in the World Research Methodology.
> <https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-world/freedom-world-research-methodology>”
> /Freedom House/, Mar. 2020.
>
> ^[4]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftnref4>
> World Bank estimation
> <https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates-impact-covid-19-global-poverty-effect-new-data>
> is that an additional 88 million people will live in poverty as a
> result of Covid-19
>
> ^[5]
> <https://traileoni.it/2020/12/protests-and-the-future-of-protesting-post-covid-19/#_ftnref5>
> Morelli, Massimo, and Roberto Censolo. “COVID-19 and the Potential
> Consequences for Social Stability.” /Peace Economics, Peace Science
> and Public Policy/, vol. 26, no. 3, 26 Aug. 2020, doi:
> https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2020-0045
> <https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2020-0045>.
>
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