Social Unrest
This report develops a framework of social unrest within a complex understanding of
systemic risk. The goal is to try to identify triggers (events that lead to social
unrest) and drivers (causal roots) for the emergence of social unrest and, based on
this functional analysis, to design policy options on how to avoid, mitigate or handle
unrest. The framework should enable a better understanding of the circumstances that
may trigger social unrest, how intensely that unrest is likely to materialize and
what interventions promise to de-escalate the conflict or even prevent social unrest
in the first place. Since social unrest is more a process of escalation than a finite
state of the world, the term has been conceptualized in a step-by-step escalation
scheme. Each step makes social unrest more severe. It is a gradual framework that
identifies the different stages that make social unrest more and more probable. In
order to identify relevant drivers and cluster of drivers, three case studies are
investigated: pandemics, cyber-related risk and financial crises. The main question
is how did or could these events cause social unrests. In a second step, an analytic
model is used to capture the combined effects learned from the case study analysis.
In a third step,the IRGC risk governance model for explaining the risk of social unrest
or predicting the consequences of social unrest is applied. Finally , guidelines for
normative governance with respect to social unrest are developed.
Published on August 10, 2012
In series:OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policiesview more titles