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Arab unrest index

The Shoe-Thrower's index

Feb 9th 2011, 14:50 by The Economist online

An index of unrest in the Arab world

IN THIS week's print edition we ran a table showing a number of indicators for members of the Arab League. By adding a few more and ascribing different weights to them we have come up with the Shoe-Thrower's index, which aims to predict where the scent of jasmine may spread next. Some factors are hard to put a number on and are therefore discounted. For instance, dissent is harder in countries with a very repressive secret police (like Libya). The data on unemployment were too spotty to be comparable and so this important factor is discounted too. We took out the Comoros and Djibouti, which do not have a great deal in common with the rest of the group, and removed the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Somalia for lack of data. The chart below is the result of ascribing a weighting of 35% for the share of the population that is under 25; 15% for the number of years the government has been in power; 15% for both corruption and lack of democracy as measured by existing indices; 10% for GDP per person; 5% for an index of censorship and 5% for the absolute number of people younger than 25. Jordan comes out surprisingly low on the chart, which suggests the weighting might need to be tweaked. Post suggestions in the comments below and we will refine it.

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DutchImport86 wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 4:23 GMT

What about literacy rates and internet users statistics?

rarcher20 wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 4:32 GMT

I second literacy rate which would bump up Jordan and Yemen down. Also, what about education levels or a proxy thereof? Again bumps Jordan up and Yemen down. I think an important factor in Egypt is the well-educated unemployed

Michael in DC wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 4:52 GMT

Although this data may be difficult to come by, perhaps we should include a ratio of college graduation rates and the subsequent levels of employment the graduates are placed in. The graduates of Egypt, often students of the highest caliber, are doomed to menial jobs due to Mubarak’s disastrous handling of the economy. I would wager the other countries in the index have similar problems.

TheGrimReaper wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 4:53 GMT

@ BailoutNation

I think that your comment portrays the typical reaction of a guy who's barely informed on what's the real meaning and genuine lecture of the Coran. Islam is a religion such as Catholicism in Europe. It is not a monolithic ball of evil. The ominous threat is solely brought by one pernicious and festering side of Islamism, not the religion as a whole. Only the fondamentalist and the extremist elements are dangerous for the Western civilization as well as for any sort of society, because they actually misread and misinterpret the Coran and dogmatically enforce their distorted dogma. Extremism has never been a healthy expression of religion and it is completely insane to think that catholicism is devoid of extremist trublions. Surprisingly as it can seems, Islam doesn't singlehandedly cause the Arab World woes.
I'm not positive that the Coran urges governments to starve its people and to keep a tight lid upon opposition groups. Islam doesn't advocate such undemocratic rules.

Yet I admit that Islam is causing big stirs between men in the Middle-East because ethnic and religious communities have a different lecture of the Coran (Sunni / Shiite). But you have to concede that the fraught situation in the Middle-East is the first and foremost the dull result of political mishandling unrelated with religion. Autocracy and authoritarianism are the grim consequences of political excesses fed by unscrupulous and harsh tyrants. The multiple unbalances in the ME are the obvious consequences of political archaism. The absence of liberties, the muzzled press, the bar on opposition and the sustaining of almighty and corrupt strongmen aren't the consequences of Islam.

Beware of pondering rapid confusion between religion and politics. Your vision is too blinkered, so I would advise you to genuinely reconsider your comment. Although we can say that the latent Israelo-Palestinian strife is entwined with religious motives as well as political ones, this situation doesn't fit the Arab World altogether.

:)

John TheO wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:05 GMT

Jordan comes low on the chart? It's above Tunisia which is where this current round of unrest began.

Interesting.

Feb 9th 2011 5:08 GMT

This may be particularly relevant to Jordan (and less relevant to most of the other states) but what about the role of hosting refugees? Jordan's population includes a substantial number of Palestinian refugees or descendants of refugees. This has always created tension within the state.

nschomer wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:11 GMT

How about including the GINI index, I would think this would bump up Egypt and lower the gulf oil states, but I could be wrong on that.

shibakoen wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:18 GMT

I would include presence of American or NATO troops as well as FDI to account for the lengths certain hegemonic interests will take to preserve stability and the status quo in the countries. I'm thinking this will put downward pressure on Yemen's high index value as well as Egypt. I know decreasing Egypt's index value now seems a bit counter-intuitive, but realizing how important the nation's stability is to American interests is it any real surprise the government has yet to fall? Would Mubarak have tucked tail by now if he was not confident in the support of (primarily) American funding?

shibakoen wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:19 GMT

DutchImport86 is on the right track with the internet usage stats. What about cell phone usage rates? These uprisings seem dependent upon digital communication.

Rhy K wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:23 GMT

@ Mike in DC

Yours is a good point comment, but I think you already answered your own question. If unemployment data is too spotty and was already discarded for the purpose of the STI, where would one find more reliable data for an even smaller slice of the population?

Considering that many of these protesters are complaining about the price of staple foods, comparative cost of living and/or inflation to real wages might be telling.

Maldosam wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:25 GMT

Here's a demographer's take on a revolution's causes : http://www.liberation.fr/monde/01012314065-la-tunisie-a-rejoint-le-model...
(in french)

CanTab09 wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:37 GMT

The internet penetration level and mobile phone usage are important, along with % of urbanised population. I can think of several historical examples where revolutions have succeeded/failed based on the speed at which momentum gathers: in a repressive environment, the dissent needs to manifest itself sufficiently rapidly before it can be crushed. For example, Germany's 'failed' revolutions in 1848 which 'petered out' in many smaller rebellions all over the country, compared to France's (many) successful ones in both the 18th and 19th centuries where the administrative and population centre was Paris. It was much easier for the Prussian authorities to crush liberal uprisings in a de-centralised (pre-1871 unification) Germany than in Jacobinist France. The same ideas can be applied to the level of communication and centralisation achieved through high internet/mobile usage and population concentrations.

Feb 9th 2011 5:38 GMT

Maldosam, your link only work for subscribers of liberation.

whenao wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 5:54 GMT

plot Venezuela and Cuba plz

jouris wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 6:38 GMT

It would be enlightening if you could include some measure of poverty rates compared to food subsidies.

Food prices looking like they may spike again this year. Depending on government finances, the ability to sustain subsidized prices for staples may be limited. And nothing motivates a revolt like people seeing that they will be unable to feed their families.

Swedane wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 6:41 GMT

@TheGrimReaper

Unfortunately I came in too late to read BailoutNation's post, and I can see that it has been removed - probably by some oversensitive person who could not take criticism.

You seem to take an apologetic stand in your defence of Islam, but what is it that you find apologetic (and positive?) in the Coran? Seen from my point of view there are never any positive news coming out of the Muslim world - never! Even so-called moderate Muslims here in Europe do not protest or demonstrate against terrorist acts of their co-religionists and the absence of condemnation on their part is - rightly or wrongly - interpreted as a consent by many in the West.

You say that: "Autocracy and authoritarianism are the grim consequences of political excesses fed by unscrupulous and harsh tyrants." but that is precisely typical of Muslim countries because Islam is an authoritarian and tyrannic ideology.

EyeOfTheTiger wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 6:42 GMT

Great effort. If the bar chart is color coded inside to show how the different categories sum up to give the final output.

Also, if unemployment data is not available, perhaps poverty level can be included. Also, rise in inflation and rise in GDP may also reflect the underlying cause of the spreading of the scent of jasmine.

catfish9 wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 6:49 GMT

For GDP, % share and total population under 25, perhaps you should only measure from capital cities instead of the country in its entirety. The rural population may be young and impoverished but the unrest will come directly from those in close proximity to their opposition. Those in the countryside tend to get along without friction from ruling bodies because enforcement is challenging...see rural China.

Feb 9th 2011 7:14 GMT

So 40% of the unrest can be explained by simply having a large population under 25? Boy, this chart sure chocks up a lot to raging hormones :)

Thomas York wrote:
Feb 9th 2011 7:15 GMT

Not so much a comment as a few things I'd like to have clarified:

I'd like to hear how the Intelligence Unit settled on the weight of 35% for percentage of citizens under 25. Since so much of the Arab world is under 25, doesn't such a high weight just inflate the number without making much of a distinction between nations? I may be misled if in fact some countries are much younger than others.

Would it be helpful to make a distinction between men and women under 25 and weight them differently? Although the Egyptian protests don't lack female presence, it seems that they are dominated by Y chromosomes. Maybe the IU thinks this is misled.

I agree that it would be helpful to look at young individuals with some higher education and no jobs, as it seems these are the citizens most likely to organize a protest. Of a similar vein, it seems impossible to successfully do this chart without taking into account internet access as well as censorship.

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