Youth Bulges, Insurrections, and Politico-Economic Institutions

Basic data for this project

Description

We develop a model of insurrection markets and integrate the youth bulge as measured by the relative youth cohort size. Apart from certain spontaneous outbreaks of violence or riots we find youth bulges alone to be no proper predictor for political violence. However, deliberate insurrection activities that aim at changing political and economic power positions are nevertheless affected by youth bulges, but only when interacted with characteristics of the respective underlying set of politico-economic institutions. We test these implications of our theory in an empirical model based on cross-country panel data and find the effect of the relative youth cohort size on insurrection outbreaks to be moderated by changes in the underlying institutional setting, particularly changes in the labor-market conditions as approximated by unemployment rates.