Экономические истоки революций: связь между ВВП и рисками революционных выступлений

Полития: Анализ. Хроника. Прогноз. 2023. Т. 108. № 1. С. 64–87.

Ustyuzhanin V., Михеева В. А., Sumernikov E., Korotayev A.

in recent years, numerous studies have appeared that analyze the influence of different factors on the probability of revolutionary events. However, an important set of modernization variables (GDP, urbanization, education, democratization) still remains understudied. Moreover, the results of recent quantitative studies show significant discrepancies in how welfare (operationalized through GDP per capita) affects the risks of revolutions. This paper attempts to bring clarity to the study of the impact of welfare on revolutionary instability. In particular, strong discrepancies in the results of previous studies can be caused by looking at revolutions in the aggregate, without dividing them into armed or unarmed ones. We therefore conducted an analysis of revolutionary instability over the period 1900–2019, including 425 revolutionary episodes of various types. Among the main results we can highlight the existence of a strong linear negative relationship between armed revolutions and the level of GDP per capita, while the relationship between unarmed revolutions and welfare behaves curvilinear: first, as GDP per capita increases, the risks of unarmed revolutions increase, but after reaching a certain level they begin to fall. The inflection point, when the risks of unarmed revolutionary instability are greatest, can be considered the level of GDP per capita of middle-income countries, which currently face the middle-income trap. In other words, their welfare stagnates at the level that is most risky for the emergence of unarmed revolutions. Therefore, in addition to the obvious economic problems associated with the middle-income trap, one must also consider the fact that it leads to increased risks of revolutionary instability.

Keywords: модернизация, ВВП, modernization, revolutions, экономические факторы, GDP, революции, economic effects

Publication based on the results of: New revolution wave at the Afrasian instability zone (2022)