Destabilizing events – whether they are political expression events, politically motivated attacks, disruptive state acts, or some other manifestation of discontent – can vary enormously in their intensity. It is important to capture differences in intensity because they can affect the impact of seemingly similar events or the reactions of others to those events. The SPEED project's Societal St...

mics, policy makers, and even politicians that poverty and inequality should no longer be treated as soft “social issues” that can safely be subordinated to more fundamental interests in maximizing total economic output. The most important sources of this newfound concern with poverty and inequality are (1) the spectacular increase in economic inequality and other forms of disadvantage in many ...

Pre-Confucian China Although there is evidence of advanced civilization in China in very ancient times, actual recorded history begins with the Shang dynasty, in the fourteenth century B.C.E. Available evidence indicates that this was an advanced civilization. For example, art from this period is quite sophisticated, even according to modern standards. This dynasty ended with the invasion by mo...

Social institutions impact growth by redistributing resources to the young, the poor, the old, and the sick. This paper empirically substantiates that England’s premodern social institutions–specifically, the Old Poor Law (1601-1834)–contributed to her transition to the modern economy. It reduced violent, innovation-inhibiting reactions from the economic agents threatened by economic change. Th...

Social media sites like Twitter provide readily accessible sources of large-volume, high-velocity data streams, now referred to as “Big Data.” While private companies have already made great strides in leveraging these social media sources, many public organizations and government agencies could reap significant benefits from these resources. Care must be exercised in this integration, however,...

Greed, grievances, and mobilization are generally offered as explanations for rebellion and civil war. The authors extend arguments about the precursors to nonviolent protest, violent rebellion, and civil war. These arguments motivate a series of hypotheses that are tested against data from the Minorities at Risk project. The results of the analysis suggest, first, that the factors that predict...