Violent domestic conflicts spread between countries via spillover effects and the desire to emulate events abroad. Herein, we extend this emulation logic to the potential for the contagion of nonviolent conflicts. The spread of predominantly nonviolent pro-democracy mobilizations across the globe in the mid-to-late 1980s, the wave of protests in former Soviet states during the Color revolutions in the 2000s, and the eruption of nonviolent movements across the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s each suggest that the observation of collective action abroad encourages a desire to emulate among potential challengers to domestic autocrats. However, the need to emulate varies. Potential challengers with a recent history of protest at home are less dependent (than are those without similar experience) upon foreign exemplars to mobilize the participants and generate the resources required to make emulation practicable. By contrast, where the domestic experience of protest is absent, opposition movements are more reliant upon emulation of foreign exemplars. We test the implications of this logic using a series of multivariate logistic regression analyses. Our tests employ data on nonviolent civil resistance mobilizations that occurred across the global population of autocratic states between 1946 and 2006. These tests, along with post-estimation analysis, provide evidence consistent with our conditional logic of emulation.

The article questions neo-Malthusian theories that attempt to explain conflict and food security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as the consequence of environmental stress factors like water scarcity, drought and climate change. Instead it argues that socio-political factors are key in understanding conflicts in the region. The environment is a quintessentially human category and susceptible to adaptation, not an external variable that mechanically triggers socio-political consequences. Particular emphasis is laid on the cases of Syria and Darfur. The article then shows how the natural endowments of the MENA shaped food security before the advent of oil and globalised food trade. It concludes with an attempt to find a balanced explanation of the role of environmental factors in MENA food security today.

Several factors contribute to or inhibit the “contagiousness” of regional conflict and irregular warfare, whether conducted at the interstate, extrastate, or intrastate level. Five broad drivers of the diffusion of regional conflict are (1) weak states, (2) anticipated power shifts, regional and domestic, (3) unstable and poorly controlled border regions, (4) large refugee flows, and (5) the religiously-based non-state militant campaign against the state as an organizing principle of world politics. These factors are both endogenous and exogenous to particular states and societies, and must be considered alongside the standard factors considered in international relations literature to be the basis of “dangerous state dyads:” geographic contiguity, absence of alliances, absence of an advanced economy, absence of a democratic polity, and absence of a regionally preponderant power. Two case studies illustrate this argument: the rise of Islamic State, and the awareness of the causes of contagion in regional conflict implicit in Israeli security policy.

In 2011, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 37 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths. This significant increase from the 31 conflicts recorded in 2010 was primarily driven by an increase in conflicts on the African continent, and is only in part due to events tied to the Arab Spring which mosdy led to other forms of violence than conventional armed conflict. The number of active conflicts still remains at a relatively low level compared to the peak years in the early 1990s, when more than 50 conflicts were active. The number of wars – conflicts leading to 1,000 or more batde-related deaths – increased to six; however, it is a considerably lower number than during the peak years of the early 1990s. For the second consecutive year, Afghanistan claimed the highest number of fatalities. Five armed conflicts listed for 2010 were not active in 2011, but during the year three new conflicts erupted – Libya, South Sudan and Sudan (Abyei) – and six conflicts already registered were restarted. Only one peace agreement was concluded during the year. Thus, the trend with low numbers of peace accords which started in 2009 continues.

It is believed that financial markets are integrated and sensitive to news – including political conflicts in some regions of the world. Furthermore, financial markets seem to react differently to information flows from one region to another. The purpose of this research is to discern the effects of the recent Middle East and North Africa (MENA) conflicts – commonly referred to as the Arab Spring – on the volatility of risks and returns of global and regional stock markets as well as Gold and Oil markets. To be more specific, we consider the main uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and their impact on financial markets – as measured by the volatility of their risks and returns. In sum, we cluster 53 stock markets into 6 regions; namely, developed, developing, MENA, Asia, Europe, and Latin America countries, and use T-GARCH to assess the reaction of these regions to each uprising event independently. In addition, we use GARCH-M to assess the reaction of these regions stock markets as well as Gold and Oil markets to the uprisings of MENA as a whole. Our empirical findings suggest that the uprising events of MENA have more impact on the volatility of risks and returns of developed, developing, and Europe regions than MENA itself. In addition, although the results show that the volatility of both risks and returns of both developed and MENA regions are significantly affected by general conflicts in MENA, the volatility of MENA is affected during all intervals and with higher significance level. Furthermore, while MENA uprisings as a whole impact on the volatility of risk of oil (after 5 days) and gold (immediately after entering news) significantly, the returns of these markets are not affected by conflicts.