printUrbanization and Revolutions:
a Quantitative Analysis
Ustyzhanin V.V.
стажер-исследователь Лаборатория мониторинга рисков социально-политической дестабилизации Национального исследовательского университета «Высшая школа экономики»; младший научный сотрудник международной лаборатории демографии и человеческого капитала Российской академии народного хозяйства и государственной службы, Москва, Россия. vvustiuzhanin@hse.ru
Sumernikov E.A.
Research Intern, Laboratory for Monitoring the Risks of Socio-Political Destabilization, National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Moscow, Russia. iasumernikov@hse.ru
Grinin L.Ye.
Dr. Sci. (Philos.), Chief Researcher Laboratory for Monitoring the Risks of Socio-Political Destabilization, National Research University “Higher School of Economics”; Chief Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of RAS, Moscow, Russia. lgrinin@hse.ru
Korotayev A.V.
Dr. Sci. (Hist.), Head of the Laboratory for Monitoring the Risks of Socio-Political Destabilization, National Research University “Higher School of Economics”; Chief Researcher at the Institute for African Studies of RAS, Moscow, Russia. akorotayev@gmail.com
The research was conducted as part of the HSE Basic Research Program in 2022 with the support of the RSF, Project No. 18-18-00254.
Ustyzhanin V.V., Sumernikov E.A., Grinin L.Ye., Korotayev A.V. Urbanization and Revolutions: a Quantitative Analysis. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2022. No 10. P. 85-95
Developing countries are now at a stage of accelerated modernization and its crucial part – the urbanization transition. In classical papers on this topic, authors mentioned that revolutions are an integral part of modernization. In this article authors present a study of how urbanization affects the risks of different revolutionary events – armed and unarmed. By exploiting cross-national data from 1950 to 2019 and analyzing 459 revolutionary events from NAVCO database, authors conclude that there is a strong and negative correlation between urbanization and the risks of armed uprisings. Meanwhile, the risks of unarmed revolutions behave curvilinearily: as urbanization increases, the risks of the unarmed uprisings increase, but begin to fall when the country is in the final stage of the urbanization transition. Thus, we are dealing with a pronounced curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between urbanization and the risks of unarmed revolutionary destabilization.
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