| dc.description.abstract |
Contemporary notions of food security are ever more connected to the commodification
and globalization of modern agriculture. As nations continue to count on consistent
and reliable commodity markets to provide food imports at competitive rates, unexpected
externalities can prompt sudden spikes in worldwide food prices with severe consequences
to poorer populations in developing countries. In some cases, such cost crises provoke
episodes of violent unrest and place civil safety and regime stability in jeopardy.
This research paper examines the specific characteristics of a political economy connected
to occurrences of food-related violent civil unrest, which occurred in response to
the most recent 2007-2008 food price crisis. First, this paper outlines the mechanisms
of the 2007-2008 crisis and the historical context from which it emerged. Second,
this paper reviews the array of existing research that connects changes in food prices
with the incidence of civil unrest while presenting explanations for why such riots
occurred in some countries and not others. Third, this paper presents a set of empirical
measures that attempt to quantify the specific characteristics of a political economy
that capture variation between the developing economies in Africa. The continent was
chosen as the research sample because it experienced significant cases of civil unrest
that coincided with the food price crisis. Fourth, this paper statistically tests
those measures of the political economy against metrics for food-related civil unrest
to reveal correlations. Finally, Egypt's experience over the course of the 2007-2008
crisis is examined as a case example. The response of Egypt’s government to the crisis
is examined in order to place the quantitative models within a concrete, qualitative
context. The paper proposes three empirical models with varying approaches to operationalizing
the political economies of African countries around the 2007-2008 crisis. The models
offer complementary explanations for variation in the incidence of food-related unrest
and reliably explain the Egyptian case example as examined in this paper. Finally,
the models suggest how governments may augment their capacity to take action to reduce
the consequences of price crises by focusing on specific aspects of governance and
economic policy.
|
|
