Front Matter Page
Research and Middle East and Central Asia Departments
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Related Literature
3 The Reported Social Unrest Index
3.1 Data
3.2 Constructing the Index
3.3 Events
3.4 Event Screening
4 Assessing the Index
4.1 External Validity
4.2 Internal Validity
5 Statistical Properties of the Index
5.1 Cross-sectional distribution
5.2 Correlation of unrest events in time and space
5.3 Predictability
6 Conclusions and possible applications
A Further details on construction
B Other narrative approaches
B.1 Philippines, 1986
B.2 Korea, 1986–1987
B.3 Middle East, 1999–2019
C Comparison to other measures
D Robustness of Statistical Properties
E External event descriptions
E.1 Arab Uprisings
E.2 Venezuela
E.3 Thailand
E.4 Color Revolutions
E.5 Philippines 1986
E.6 Korea 1987
E.7 End of Apartheid
E.8 Korea 2016
E.9 USIP Middle East Timelines
Figures
Figure 1: Number of contemporary articles per month, zt
Figure 2: Cross-country average monthly article counts
Figure 3: Arab uprisings, June 2010 – December 2014: Major events identified from RSUI event coding
Figure 4: Fraction of countries with social unrest events, 12 month moving average
Figure 5: Arab uprisings, June 2010 – December 2014: Countries with major events identified by Worth (2016)
Figure 6: Thailand: Major events identified from external sources, January 2005-December 2014
Figure 7: Thailand: Major events identified from RSUI event coding, January 2005-December 2014
Figure 8: Venezuela: Major events identified by Gutierrez (2017) and Briceño-Ruiz (2019), January 2013-June 2019
Figure 9: Venezuela: Major events identified from RSUI event coding, January 2013-June 2019
Figure 10: Color Revolutions: Major events identified by Tucker (2007), August 2000-December 2005
Figure 11: Color Revolutions: Major events identified from RSUI event coding, August 2000-December 2005
Figure 12: Number of contemporary articles per month, zt, by language
Figure 13: RSUI, June 2010 – present: Select Middle Eastern Countries with French widely spoken, by language
Figure 14: RSUI, June 2010 – present: Largest six Arabic-speaking countries, by language
Figure 15: RSUI, June 2010 – present: Largest six Arabic-speaking countries, by search term
Figure 16: Cross-sectional RSUI density, empirical and estimated,
Figure 17: Distribution of time since last event
Figure 18: Mean RSUI around events and large increases
Figure 19: Measures of predictability of the RSUI series
Figure 20: RSUI January 2018 – present
Figure 21: Philippines, January 1986 – January 1987: Major events identified by Schock (1999)
Figure 22: Philippines, January 1986 – January 1987: Major events identified from RSUI event coding
Figure 23: Korea, January 1986 – November 1987: Major events identified by Choe & Kim (2012)
Figure 24: Korea, January 1986 – November 1987: Major events identified from RSUI event coding
Figure 25: South Africa: Major events identified by Waldmeir (1997) and Klopp & Zuern (2007), October 1989-December 1994. Asterisks denote likely unrest events.
Figure 26: South Africa: Major events identified from RSUI event coding, October 1989-December 1994
Figure 27: Korea: Major events identified by Kim (2017), June 2016-December 2017
Figure 28: Korea: Major events identified from RSUI event coding, June 2016-December 2017
Figure 29: Middle East, January 1999 – June 2019: Major events identified by USIP
Figure 30: Middle East, January 1999 – June 2019: Major events identified from RSUI event coding
Figure 31: RSUI vs. ACLED, 27 countries, January 2000 – March 2020, simple average
Figure 32: RSUI vs. CNTS, 117 countries, January 1995 – March 2020, simple average
Figure 33: RSUI vs. ACLED & CNTS, Tunisia, 2000 – 2014
Figure 34: RSUI vs. ACLED & CNTS, Egypt, 2000 – 2014
Figure 35: RSUI vs. CNTS, Venezuela, 2013 – 2019
Figure 36: RSUI vs. ACLED & CNTS, Thailand, 2005 – 2015
Figure 37: Country-specific parameter estimates. Some countries omitted due to MLE convergence failures. Full-sample estimates shown in blue.
Figure 38: Parameter estimates with changing threshold cutoffs
Tables
Table 1: Article search Criteria
Table 2: Monthly article counts, summary statistics
Table 3: Results of event scereening
Table 4: Alternate search terms
Table 5: Within-country correlations with baseline, varying search terms
Table 6: Full-sample maximum-likelihood estimation of cross sectional density, N=6926,
. Standard errors in parentheses. Table 7: Conditional probabilities of social unrest.
Table 8: Measures of predictability of index and events. Maximum within countries, then averaged across countries
Table 9: Alternate language search terms
Table 10: Search modifications and reasons
Table 11: Verbatim descriptions of Arab Uprising events from Worth (2016)
Table 12: Verbatim descriptions of Venezuelan events 2013-2019 from Gutierrez (2017) and Briceño-Ruiz (2019)
Table 13: Verbatim descriptions of Korean events 2016–2017 from Kim (2017)
Table 14: Verbatim descriptions of Color Revolutions from Tucker (2007)
Table 15: Verbatim descriptions of Korean events 2016-2017 from Kim (2017)
Table 16: Verbatim descriptions of Korean events 2016-2017 from Kim (2017)
Table 17: Verbatim descriptions of South African events 1990–1994 from Klopp & Zuern (2007) (daily) and Waldmeir (1997) (monthly)
Table 18: Verbatim descriptions of Korean events 2016-2017 from Kim (2017)
Table 19: USIP timeline of events in the Middle East