Abstract
Recent spikes in international food prices and the occurrence of food riots in the period 2007–2008 have led many researchers to investigate more closely the links between rising food prices and conflict or political instability. However, this emerging literature suffers from a number of shortcomings. The objective of this article is to analyze these shortcomings further, highlight their theoretical and empirical implications, and offer ways of addressing them. I focus on three main issues. First, I look at the recurring lack of precision in the use of concepts such as political instability and conflict, and in particular the food riot concept itself. Second, I examine the often uncritical data gathering based on framing by media sources without a closer analysis of the events that took place on the ground. And third, I focus on the issue of presupposed and understudied economic as well as political causal mechanisms.
Abstract
Récemment, la hausse des prix mondiaux des denrées alimentaires et les émeutes de la faim en 2007–2008 ont amené de nombreux chercheurs à étudier de plus près les liens entre la hausse des prix des denrées alimentaires et le conflit ou l’instabilité politique. Cependant, ce corps émergent d’ouvrages sur le sujet souffre de plusieurs lacunes. L’objectif de cet article est d’aller plus loin dans l’analyse de ces lacunes, de mettre en avant leurs implications théoriques et empiriques, et d’offrir des solutions pour les combler. Je me focalise sur trois problèmes principaux: tout d’abord, un manque de précision récurrent dans l’utilisation de concepts tels que l’instabilité politique ou le conflit, et en particulier pour le concept d’émeute de la faim lui-même. Ensuite, les données collectées par les média en fonction de leur agenda, souvent manquant de sens critique et d’analyse approfondie des évènements qui ont lieux sur place. Enfin, la problématique des mécanismes de cause à effet politiques et économiques, qui restent insuffisamment étudiés et basés sur des suppositions.
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Notes
An intervening variable is understood here as a moderating variable (versus a mediating variable).
Note that most regimes called authoritarian are often hybrid regimes according to the classification of Polity IV scores.
Similarly, civil war does not have to lead to (national) political instability if it is relatively isolated in the periphery of the country.
Riots are indeed rarely indiscriminate, whether directed at ethnic groups or the government (Wilkinson, 2009).
See also Table 3.
ACLED records data on political violence in Africa, including riots and protests (www.acleddata.com).
I did find one account via all Africa.com indicating that a peaceful march organized by the World Food Programme took place in May 2008 to bring rising prices to attention.
Fatalities are mostly caused by government repression, for example.
This seems also dependent on the general tendency of a regime to use repression, for example, regime type.
The riot in Redeyef in Tunisia can also be seen as just one event in a cycle of contention in 2008 against economic marginalization of the mining basin (Gobe, 2009).
An important recent contribution on how the scale and form of land scarcity conflict is shaped by institutional and political factors in sub-Saharan Africa is Boone (2014).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Arnim Langer for many helpful comments and suggestions on many earlier drafts of this article, as well as two anonymous reviewers. The author is a PhD Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).
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Demarest, L. Food Price Rises and Political Instability: Problematizing a Complex Relationship. Eur J Dev Res 27, 650–671 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.52
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.52