Arab unrest index

Add India too to the list. The hypocritical anti-corruption movement (which aims to install one big mammoth nationwide bureaucracy to combat corruption, apparently nobody noticing the joke) will soon lead to corruption reaching sky high levels. then India will topple too just like the arab regimes.

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A Group of Econometrics Students and I undertook a study of the factors affecting unrest, based on the Economist Shoe Throwers Index, using a ordered probit regression model.
We expanded the sample size to include all majority Muslim countries (47) and included several new variables, some based on the comments on this article. Our key findings were that youth population, corruption, literacy and Internet penetration were redundant variables, while urban population was an omitted variable.
If anyone is interested, a copy of our paper can be viewed at:
http://db.tt/zKL4cjf
As well as a short presentation:
http://db.tt/svTblob
These are dropbox links, otherwise send me an email and I can forward the files to you - wdhparker@gmail.com

I submit that food price inflation would give an accurate mapping to the present unrest.

udp1024 's comment is the most important for viewing this article in context. Are these figures good or bad - let's put our own nations in the pot.

Your weighting of time in government for Jordan seems unbalanced towards catering for the essentially tyrannical regimes. Jordan's is a more benign regime despite its time in power.

How about globalizing this chart? Let's see where United States, Canada and UK stand :)

Literacy Rates for sure. Access to Internet, Inflation rate and unemployment rate are all significant.

I suppose the name is regionalized eg Holland; the
Wooden-Shoe-thrower-index, Canada; the Snowshoe-thrower-index, the
Mid-east; the Sandal-thrower-index, Most of Africa; the
Cheap-rubber-flip-flop-thrower-index, US major cities; the
unlaced-right-out-of-the-box-stolen-basketball-thrower-index,
Nantucket: the Topsider-thrower-index, Switzerland, France, Italy; the
Brightly-colored-ski-boot-thrower-index (ouch) and the Northern
Territories; the clubbed-baby-sealskin-Mukluk-thrower index

Just a bit of fun. Of course understand this is not a very thoughtful approach to categorizing civil unrest.

As a Bahraini (you know, one of the jasmine scented shoe-throwers), I find this entire concept absurdly offensive. To boil down violent civil unrest (each with its own entirely individual history)which has claimed the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands, to a flippant 'interactive shoe-throwing chart' is, frankly, a worrying statement about the disconnect media has from the real human suffering of those it is commentating and reporting on.

Next week, "The Laziness Index of Third World Countries" and the "Jewish Conspiracy 500 richest men in the world"?

I would suggest a slightly different approach. The drivers are:
Fears,
Hope,
Population to prosecute the resolution of the fears (Youth percentage, Youth actual number but also the Armed Forces (including police) who share the same problems)
The existance of a "spark", ie violent death.
Fears could be measured by how far from the present condition and way of life (living, education, principles) is the presented future in the media (news, internet, gossips, blogs etc measured in level of change and time.
Hope is the same as Fears but from the opposite perspective.
Percentage of youth as it has been presented.
Actual number of youths.
Fear and Hope in the Armed Forces.
The existence of a violent death presented in the media.
Concerning Weights I would first introduce a ROC (Rank Order Centroid) approach and have some historical data as test data.

I have a few sugegstions that would hopefully improve the predictive powers:

- Add Income disparity (as indicated by the Gini index)
- Add unemplyment statistics (even estimates if possible)
- As a result,reduce the weight placed on population under 25.

The index idea is excellent. I'd like to suggest some additional measures:
1. Population level of education: In Tunisia, population is highly educated. Education is an important factor that can fuel anger at injustices
2. Number of Internet users. Internet provide the average Middle Easter citizen with access to free and independent information and news. Tech savvy users tend to rebel more
3. Sectarian decomposotion: Countries where a sectarian majority is ruled by another minority tend to have more explosiveness. Bahrian and Syria are good examples.
4. Number of political and opinion prisoners

You seem to be missing the most important factor.
The rising food prices should be included in this index and also how large a share does an average family spend on food of their total income.

Doubling the price of food will send any society on the road of chaos, if the people already spend half of their money on food.

Being very cynical, I would add some indicators addressing the value of the country, such as GDP or gross exports. The net worth of the current ruler would also be an excellent index.

I'm curious about such ratings taken somewhat snobbishly from the seeming tranquillity of a developed free democracy as the UK - how would the UK score ? We have plenty of youth disgruntlement (unemployment levels of those without university places, tuition fee issues for those with).

It could be interesting to make a indicator for latin america.

Economist's Index of arab unrest is helpful and illuminating. For technical problems, I understand why the Economist was not able to take into consideration some qualitative variables. But it seems to me that at least political legitimacy, one of these qualitative variables, should have been introduced into the model. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to segment arab countries and to understand why the unrest is more probable in some states than in into others. Here, I am only relying on basic principles of sociological and political theories. It is difficult but not impossible to translate political legitimacy into quantitative measure.

What about some proxy for education? literacy rates, enrollment, etc. A small factor, yes, but it surely contributes.

So how do the rest of the UN member states stack up on this index?