1 Grievance and Opportunity: Food Prices, Political Regime, and Protest

Anecdotal evidence from the global food crisis of 2007-8 raises the more general question of whether international food prices have any bearing on patterns of contentious political mobilization. Contrary to the neo-Malthusian notion of a monotonic relationship between resource scarcity and conflict, we contend that the effects of world food prices and other economic shocks are contingent on regime type. Drawing on a sample of 55 major cities in 49 Asian and African countries for the period 1961-2006, we find that international food prices are a significant determinant of the incidence of protest and riots, even when controlling for aggregate economic performance and other economic shocks such as changes in the overall price level. However, this relationship is contingent on regime type, with hybrid regimes driving the relationship in the full sample