The Anatomy of Social Unrest: Economic Insecurity, Institutional Legitimacy, and Pathways to Political Instability

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Theoretical Foundations of Collective Mobilization

The transformation of widespread economic dissatisfaction into political rebellion represents one of the most complex phenomena in comparative political science, sociology, and political psychology. Macroeconomic pressures such as systemic unemployment, structural inflation, and income inequality rarely translate directly or automatically into mass mobilization. Instead, objective material hardship is mediated by psychological constructs, organizational networks, and political opportunity structures that shape how individuals perceive, internalize, and act upon their economic realities1.

Relative Deprivation and Cognitive Injustice

Relative Deprivation (RD) theory posits that collective action arises not from absolute poverty or objective deprivation, but from a perceived discrepancy between expectations—the goods and conditions of life to which people believe they are rightfully entitled—and capabilities—the goods and conditions they think they are capable of attaining or maintaining1. Classical social psychological formulation distinguishes between two primary dimensions of relative deprivation: individual and group-based1. Individual Relative Deprivation (IRD) reflects a personal evaluation that one is worse off compared to a personal standard, past trajectory, or immediate peer group1. Methodological meta-analyses demonstrate that IRD predominantly leads to individualized coping mechanisms, such as psychological distress, personal self-improvement efforts, workplace moonlighting, deviance, or political withdrawal1. Conversely, Group Relative Deprivation (GRD)—or fraternalistic deprivation—occurs when an individual judges that a social, economic, or occupational group to which they belong is unfairly disadvantaged relative to an outgroup, political elite, or historical standard of collective entitlement1. Emotions play a critical mediating role in converting cognitive judgments into political action1. While cognitive appraisals of resource disparities generate dissatisfaction, it is the affective component—specifically group-based anger, resentment, and moral outrage—that serves as the proximate psychological driver of collective protest participation1. When individuals attribute their group's deprivation to systemic bias, corruption, or deliberate exploitation by powerful outgroups, group relative deprivation triggers external attributions of responsibility2. This affective shift transforms passive economic suffering into active anti-establishment hostility and politicized grievance2.

Status Anxiety and Social Marginalization

Extending relative deprivation framework, political sociology emphasizes status anxiety as a central mechanism driving political alienation and anti-establishment mobilization5. Formulated by Noam Gidron and Peter Hall, subjective social status represents an individual's self-perceived standing within the societal hierarchy, constructed through the dual lenses of material security and socio-cultural recognition4. Subjective social status is analytically distinct from objective socioeconomic status metrics, such as immediate household income or educational attainment4. Rapid occupational restructuring, industrial decline, technological automation, and shifting cultural norms can severely depress the subjective status of specific demographics, particularly working-class and lower-middle-class populations4. When individuals feel that their societal contributions are no longer valued, that their occupational dignity has been eroded, or that social respect is disproportionately accorded to cosmopolitan elites or minority groups, they experience acute status anxiety4. Status anxiety generates deep social marginalization and political detachment4. Individuals experiencing low subjective status feel disconnected from the normative political order and believe that democratic institutions exclusively serve privileged elites2. Radical political movements and populist entrepreneurs exploit these anxieties by offering narratives of group restoration, directing collective resentment toward establishment elites, international institutions, or culturally distinct outgroups2.

Legitimacy Crises and Political Opportunity Structures

Economic distress and status anxiety remain latent social grievances unless activated by institutional failure and political opportunities2. Systemic stability relies upon Weberian institutional legitimacy—the widespread public belief that existing political, economic, and legal structures are appropriate, equitable, and effective in managing public affairs2. When state institutions consistently fail to shield populations from macroeconomic volatility, or when public policies are perceived as corrupt mechanisms designed to enrich political insiders, a fundamental legitimacy crisis unfolds2. Political opportunity structure theories demonstrate that collective action emerges when changes in the institutional environment alter the perceived costs, risks, and potential rewards of mass mobilization3. Structural factors such as elite fractures, visible state corruption, policy blunders, or sudden openings in legislative access signal institutional vulnerability3. These openings reduce the perceived risk of public dissent, enabling latent grievances to crystallize into sustained political protests3.

Empirical Dynamics of Economic Hardship and Social Unrest

Macroeconomic volatility serves as a primary environmental catalyst for public protest, yet empirical research in comparative politics demonstrates that different economic indicators produce distinct mobilization patterns10. The relationship between economic distress and political action is non-linear and heavily contingent upon how material hardship intersects with daily survival strategies1.

Inflation and Essential Commodity Shocks

Among macroeconomic stressors, rapid spikes in the cost of living—particularly for non-substitutable essential commodities like food, cooking fuel, heating, electricity, and public transportation—exhibit the strongest, most immediate statistical correlation with nonviolent civil resistance and spontaneous mass demonstrations10. Price increases in basic goods act as an immediate, regressive tax on household budgets, directly threatening basic subsistence and daily security10. Cross-national econometric evaluations reveal that a one-percentage-point increase in national inflation rates correlates with an estimated 0.9% increase in the incidence of nonviolent civil resistance events worldwide11. Standard deviation shocks to national inflation rates (approximately 6.1 percentage points) are associated with a 5.5% surge in the total frequency of public protests11. The global cost-of-living crisis of 2021–2022 provides a clear empirical illustration of this dynamic10. Data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) documented more than 12,500 distinct protest events specifically focused on fuel, food, and energy prices across 148 countries during a twelve-month period10. Quantitative analysis of these events demonstrates that demonstrations were rarely triggered by generalized global price increases alone10. Rather, protests were sparked by specific governmental failures to protect citizens, such as the sudden deregulation of fuel subsidies, unexpected increases in public utility tariffs, or tax policies perceived as shifting economic burdens onto lower-income households10.

Youth Economic Exclusion and Structural Unemployment

The political impact of unemployment varies substantially depending on demographic composition and structural labor market conditions13. While generalized adult unemployment during deep economic recessions can sometimes induce risk-averse survival behaviors, resource conservation, and political passivity, youth economic exclusion acts as a potent accelerator of political volatility7. Youth economic exclusion—typically conceptualized as high rates of youth unemployment alongside elevated educational attainment—creates a severe generational expectation gap7. Expanding cohorts of educated young people who encounter structural barriers to entering the formal labor market experience intense status blockage7. Unemployed youth possess relatively low opportunity costs for participating in time-intensive public demonstrations, high digital literacy for networked coordination, and strong feelings of generational betrayal3.

Objective Hardship Versus Perceived Injustice

A central puzzle in comparative political analysis is why societies experiencing identical macroeconomic conditions often exhibit radically different levels of political stability. Aggregate macroeconomic indicators—such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates, Gini coefficients, or official unemployment figures—are incomplete predictors of mass civil unrest on their own9. The transition from material hardship to political mobilization depends fundamentally on how economic reality is subjectively interpreted through psychological and cognitive filters1.

The Psychological Mediator: Subjective Social Status

Objective economic metrics evaluate aggregate wealth creation or labor force statistics, but they fail to capture the relational and normative aspects of human well-being2. Comparative survey research demonstrates that subjective social status—where individuals place themselves on a multi-rung social ladder—predicts political alienation, anti-establishment voting, and protest participation far more accurately than objective household income or educational attainment4. Individuals experiencing high status anxiety or perceived status decline internalize zero-sum economic mindsets2. Under zero-sum economic perceptions, individuals believe that wealth and opportunity are fixed resources, meaning that any economic gain achieved by an outgroup, elite class, or immigrant population directly results in an equivalent loss for their own ingroup2. When economic inequality is filtered through zero-sum mindsets, public tolerance for wealth disparities collapses, and disparities are reinterpreted as evidence of institutional corruption and elite self-dealing2.

Macroeconomic Shock (Inflation, Unemployment) │ ▼ Subjective Cognitive Filters (Relative Deprivation, Zero-Sum Mindsets) │ ├───────────────────────────────┐ ▼ ▼ Procedural Injustice Perceived Procedural Fairness Perceived │ │ ▼ ▼ Systemic Moral Outrage & Revolt Political Resignation or Reform

Procedural vs. Distributive Justice

Public evaluations of economic hardship are governed by two distinct social psychological dimensions: distributive justice and procedural justice2. Distributive justice concerns the perceived fairness of resource allocation across society2. Procedural justice concerns the perceived fairness, impartiality, and transparency of the institutional rules and decision-making processes that govern those allocations2. Societies can endure significant distributive inequality without widespread political instability if citizens perceive that procedural justice remains intact—meaning they believe that economic mobility is driven by merit, hard work, and equal application of the law9. However, when procedural justice is perceived to have failed—evidenced by tax evasion among elites, corporate bailout schemes, nepotism, and political bribery—distributive inequality is reinterpreted as structural injustice2. Under conditions of perceived procedural failure, even modest economic shocks can spark intense moral outrage and demands for political restructuring9.

Longitudinal data from the Gallup World Poll illustrates this perceptual reality17. Global tracking of emotional well-being indicates that self-reported negative emotions—specifically daily worry, stress, sadness, and anger—reached record highs during the early 2020s and remain elevated above pre-2020 baselines17. Gallup's 2025/2026 data indicates that 38% of surveyed adults globally experienced significant worry, 36% experienced stress, and 23% experienced explicit daily anger17. Elevated negative emotions are concentrated in regions experiencing prolonged structural crises, such as the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America21. This sustained emotional strain creates a psychological baseline that lowers the activation threshold for political mobilization when economic policy blunders occur2.

The Digital Information Ecosystem and Mobilization Dynamics

The structural transformation of the global media environment has altered how social grievances are articulated, shared, and organized3. The transition from information scarcity—dominated by centralized broadcast media gatekeepers—to information abundance—characterized by decentralized digital communication networks—has restructured the mechanics of mass social unrest24.

Informational Abundance and the Erosion of Elite Authority

As analyzed by Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public, the proliferation of digital platforms dismantled the structural monopoly on information long held by political, corporate, and intellectual elites24. Under historical conditions of information scarcity, institutional authority was sustained by controlled narratives and public trust in professional expertise24. In an environment of information abundance, networked publics possess real-time technological capabilities to scrutinize, expose, and highlight elite missteps, policy failures, and internal contradictions24. This shift has reduced institutional trust across democratic and authoritarian regimes alike24. Digital platforms enable rapid aggregation of counter-narratives that focus on institutional dysfunction24. As a result, contemporary social movements often unite around shared opposition—a dynamic Gurri conceptualizes as the political power of negation24. Networked publics organize effectively to challenge existing authority, but frequently struggle to establish alternative political platforms, coherent policy proposals, or stable governing coalitions24.

Platform Architecture, Algorithms, and Polarization

Modern social media platforms operate on business models that optimize for user engagement, relying on algorithms that prioritize emotionally provocative content28. Because group-based anger and moral outrage drive high interaction rates, digital platform architectures systematically amplify perceptions of relative deprivation, elite corruption, and intergroup conflict2. These digital dynamics produce several distinct social phenomena: First, algorithmic curation fosters affective polarization by sorting users into ideologically homogeneous echo chambers, deepening intergroup hostility and eroding democratic norms29. Second, declining confidence in public information drives epistemic fragmentation, where competing social groups rely on divergent sources of truth, rendering fact-based consensus difficult during national crises24. Third, networked environments facilitate the rapid spread of misinformation and targeted disinformation campaigns that exploit genuine economic anxiety, directing public blame toward vulnerable outgroups or political opponents6.

The Power and Fragility of Networked Movements

In Twitter and Tear Gas, Zeynep Tufekci details how digitally networked social movements operate under different organizational dynamics than pre-digital civil rights or labor movements3. Digital communication tools allow modern social movements to scale up rapidly, gathering hundreds of thousands of protesters in public spaces within days without formal organizational hierarchies, long-term leadership, or prior infrastructure3. However, this rapid mobilization capacity conceals an underlying structural fragility3. Pre-digital movements developed organizational muscles, tactical flexibility, and dispute-resolution protocols through the slow, arduous process of building institutions before launching public actions3. In contrast, digitally networked movements often skip these foundational stages3. When faced with state responses—such as tactical concessions, co-optation, or targeted repression—networked movements frequently experience a tactical freeze, struggling to negotiate, pivot strategies, or translate street mobilization into durable legislative reform3.

Divergent Pathways: Comparative Case Studies and Societal Outcomes

When widespread economic insecurity and political alienation converge, societal trajectories diverge significantly across jurisdictions. Similar economic pressures can result in democratic institutional reform, sustained political apathy, organized nonviolent resistance, or destructive conflict depending on state capacity, political opportunity structures, and civil society cohesion1.

Systemic Economic Shock │ ▼ Widespread Public Grievance │ ├──────────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────────────┐ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ Peaceful Reform Mobilization Political Apathy Destructive Conflict (Institutional (Nonviolent (Systemic (State Collapse, Mediation) Civil Resistance) Resignation) Armed Violence)

Case Study 1: Democratic Institutional Absorption – Chile’s Estallido Social (2019–2022)

Chile's Estallido Social illustrates how explosive, unorganized social unrest driven by structural inequality can be redirected into formal democratic channels9. In October 2019, a modest 30-peso fare increase on the Santiago Metro triggered widespread student protests and subway fee boycotts13. Within days, the movement expanded into nationwide demonstrations involving over 1.2 million citizens in Santiago, operating under the unifying slogan "It's not 30 pesos, it's 30 years"9. The underlying grievances were structural: decades of market-oriented economic policies had produced steady GDP growth alongside extreme social segregation, inadequate public health and education systems, and a privatized pension model (AFP) that left retirees with low replacement rates9. Public trust in political parties had collapsed, with non-identification rising from 53% in 2008 to 74% in 201813. Despite initial state repression—including the declaration of a state of emergency and police violence—the Chilean political system demonstrated institutional adaptation9. Cross-party political leadership signed the "Agreement for Peace and a New Constitution" in November 2019, establishing a democratic mechanism to replace the 1980 Pinochet-era constitution9. Although the initial constitutional draft produced by the elected assembly was rejected in a 2022 referendum, the institutional process successfully redirected street violence and civil disruption into structured, peaceful constitutional debate9.

Case Study 2: Organized Nonviolent Civil Resistance – Panama and Sri Lanka (2022)

The global cost-of-living crisis of 2022 triggered distinct nonviolent civil resistance movements in Panama and Sri Lanka10. In Panama, sharp increases in fuel and food prices sparked weeks of nationwide blockades and general strikes led by teacher unions, indigenous organizations, and civic coalitions10. The organized nature of these civil groups enabled them to sustain nonviolent discipline and compel the government into formal, televised negotiations, resulting in targeted price caps on essential goods and social spending commitments10. In Sri Lanka, extreme foreign exchange shortages led to a sovereign debt default, power cuts, and acute shortages of fuel, medicine, and food10. The Aragalaya ("The Struggle") movement mobilized broad cross-sections of society in peaceful occupations of government spaces in Colombo10. Leveraging mass civil resistance, the movement forced the resignations of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa10. Despite political instability, the movement remained nonviolent, leading to a constitutional succession and economic restructuring negotiations10.

Case Study 3: Systemic Resignation and Political Apathy

In closed autocracies or highly repressive political environments, economic insecurity often leads to political withdrawal rather than collective protest1. When citizens perceive state security apparatuses as coercive and believe that political alternatives are non-existent, the personal risk of participation outweighs potential public benefits1. Under these conditions, economic distress drives individual survival strategies—such as expanding participation in informal economies, reliance on foreign remittances, draft evasion, or international migration1. State-controlled media ecosystems reinforce this passivity by promoting narratives of inevitability, cultivating systemic cynicism, and convincing populations that political dissent is futile24.

Case Study 4: Destructive Escalation and State Fragility

Economic grievances escalate into destructive civil conflict or state collapse under a specific combination of structural conditions: weak state administrative capacity, heavy-handed security force repression, and deep ethnic or sectarian fragmentations20. In fragile states where economic shocks impair the government's ability to maintain patronage networks or fund basic public services, ruling elites often manipulate identity divisions to retain power4. When peaceful cost-of-living protests are met with lethal military force, peaceful movements fragment10. Radical factions capitalize on state brutality to recruit marginalized populations, transforming socio-economic protests into armed insurgencies or civil war31.

Technological Displacement and AI-Driven Economic Anxiety

The deployment of generative artificial intelligence and advanced cognitive automation represents a distinct driver of socio-economic anxiety7. Historically, industrial automation primarily impacted routine manual and administrative labor in manufacturing and clerical sectors7. Contemporary technological advances affect knowledge workers, professional services, creative industries, and technical fields7.

White-Collar Precarity and Expectation Disruption

The expanding capabilities of automated cognitive systems create economic precarity among highly educated urban professionals—a demographic that historically experienced high social status, stable employment, and political efficacy6. This shift generates several social dynamics: First, emerging professionals encounter reduced entry-level employment opportunities in knowledge-intensive sectors, disrupting established educational expectations7. Second, mid-career professionals face rapid skill obsolescence, triggering acute anxiety over status loss and downward social mobility6. Third, educated urban populations possess high political literacy, strong communication skills, and established access to digital platforms3. When this demographic experiences technological precarity, their capacity for organized political mobilization is high3.

Technological Disruption and Radical Mobilization

Fears of AI-driven job displacement interact directly with status anxiety and anti-elite sentiment2. When technological transitions are perceived as corporate cost-cutting measures that enrich technology executives while destabilizing white-collar employment, affected workers adopt zero-sum economic frameworks2. Technological precarity can fuel novel political alignments, uniting displaced white-collar professionals with traditional working-class labor movements6. Political entrepreneurs exploit these anxieties by promoting protectionist labor agendas, anti-automation regulation, specialized taxation on technological capital, or radical redistribution schemes like Universal Basic Income (UBI)2.

State Response Dynamics and the Repression-Protest Paradox

How state security forces and political institutions respond to initial public demonstrations influences whether social unrest subsides, stabilizes, or escalates into broader regime instability10.

The Davenport Curvilinear Model

Political science research, notably empirical evaluations by Christian Davenport, demonstrates an inverted-U relationship (a curvilinear function) between state repression and public dissent31.

Low Repression ───► Routine Dissent (Low Risk) Moderate Repression ─► Backfire Effect & Outrage Escalation (Repression Paradox) Severe Repression ───► Suppression of Action (High Latent Hostility)

At low levels of state repression, minor police impediments do not deter public dissent; citizens continue to exercise assembly rights at manageable personal risk31. At moderate levels of repression—characterized by tactical police violence, indiscriminate tear gas usage, mass arrests, or physical assault of peaceful demonstrators—states regularly trigger a backfire effect10. Moderate repression validates claims of state authoritarianism, inflames moral outrage, and shifts public sympathy toward protesters, expanding mobilization beyond initial activist circles9. At extreme levels of state repression—involving systemic violence, military force, and state terror—public protest can be temporarily suppressed by making participation costs prohibitively high10. However, extreme repression destroys institutional legitimacy, driving grievances underground and cultivating latent hostility that often erupts during future periods of state weakness2.

Concessions, Co-optation, and Trust Erosion

When governments deploy tactical concessions—such as temporary price freezes or cabinet reshuffles—without addressing underlying procedural injustice, public skepticism often persists9. ACLED data tracking the 2022 global cost-of-living protests indicates that over 89% of demonstration events worldwide remained peaceful gatherings10. In instances where security forces responded with violent suppression, subsequent protest events grew more decentralized, anti-government messaging intensified, and public confidence in state institutions collapsed9. Restoring public trust requires pairing material concessions with structural transparency, judicial accountability, and genuine civic inclusion9.

Alternative Explanations and Counter-Hypotheses

While economic insecurity and relative deprivation provide compelling frameworks for understanding civil unrest, focusing exclusively on material drivers overlooks non-economic determinants of political mobilization. Alternative theoretical perspectives challenge the central hypothesis that social unrest is primarily driven by economic grievances.

Elite Overproduction and Counter-Elite Mobilization

Elite Structural Theory, developed by sociologists such as Richard Lachmann and Peter Turchin, argues that mass social unrest is rarely initiated from below by economic hardship alone24. Instead, political instability occurs when elite overproduction leads to intra-elite competition24. When a society produces more candidate elites—highly educated, wealthy individuals seeking political power—than the institutional apparatus can absorb, frustrated counter-elites emerge24. These counter-elites mobilize latent public discontent, funding, organizing, and directing social movements to challenge incumbent elites24. From this perspective, public economic grievances serve as an operational resource leveraged in broader intra-elite power struggles24.

Cultural Backlash and Identity Politics

An alternative perspective in political sociology argues that modern political polarization and radical populist movements are primarily driven by cultural backlash rather than economic insecurity6. As post-materialist values—such as cosmopolitanism, gender equality, and international integration—became dominant across urban cultural centers and policy institutions, socio-culturally conservative populations experienced status threat6. Proponents of cultural backlash highlight that right-wing populist voting and anti-establishment mobilizations frequently occur in economically stable regions among individuals with moderate or high incomes6. In these instances, political alienation is animated by perceived cultural displacement, national identity anxieties, and opposition to rapid socio-cultural change rather than material hardship alone6.

Ideological Contagion and Network Mobilization Mechanics

A third counter-hypothesis emphasizes the autonomous role of digital communication networks and international protest contagion3. Comparative studies demonstrate that protest waves can spread rapidly across national borders between countries with distinct economic and institutional profiles3. In these cases, viral media coverage and online networking lower the psychological barrier to protest, inspiring citizens to emulate international tactics regardless of domestic macroeconomic performance3. The coordination affordances provided by digital platforms can generate mass actions driven by visual symbolism and peer imitation, independent of local economic conditions3.

Early-Warning Indicator Framework for Social Cohesion

To assist policy makers and risk analysts in identifying deteriorating social cohesion, the following structured indicator framework outlines quantitative metrics across six analytical domains. This framework provides an operational tool to evaluate societal risk and transition states without making deterministic predictions of revolution.

Interpreting this matrix requires evaluating cross-domain interactions9. While an isolated elevated risk in economic strain (e.g., temporary food inflation) can be managed by legitimate institutions, the simultaneous convergence of elevated indicators across perceptual strain, emotional distress, and digital volatility creates an acute vulnerability to mass unrest2.

Mechanisms of Peaceful Institutional Adaptation and Dispute Resolution

Preventing economic insecurity from escalating into destructive civil conflict requires proactive institutional adaptation9. States that successfully navigate structural economic transitions employ distinct mechanisms to address social grievances constructively9.

Institutionalized Tripartite Bargaining

Robust collective bargaining frameworks—involving organized labor unions, employer associations, and state representatives—serve as effective institutional shock absorbers10. When macroeconomic shocks or technological shifts occur, formal tripartite negotiations allow for mediated wage adjustments, retrenchment protections, and retraining programs without resorting to industrial paralysis or street violence10.

Target Social Safety Buffers and Transparent Communication

Universal or well-targeted social protection mechanisms directly mitigate group relative deprivation1. Rather than enacting abrupt, unannounced subsidy rollbacks, adaptive states implement compensatory cash transfers, food assistance, or phased tariff adjustments designed to protect vulnerable lower- and middle-income households10. Transparently communicating policy rationale and providing social safety buffers reduces perceptions of elite neglect9.

Participatory Governance and Procedural Transparency

Restoring institutional legitimacy requires expanding civic participation beyond periodic elections9. Implementing participatory budgeting, independent anti-corruption oversight commissions, and citizen assemblies on socio-economic policy provides structured venues for addressing procedural injustice9. When citizens observe that their grievances directly inform policy outcomes through transparent mechanisms, the psychological incentive for disruptive extra-institutional protest diminishes2.

Conclusion: Critical Configurations of Sustained Political Instability

Mass social unrest is rarely produced by isolated economic shocks or abstract income disparities alone2. Historical and contemporary empirical evidence demonstrates that sustained political instability emerges from a specific, volatile convergence of economic, psychological, technological, and institutional conditions2. The historical pattern reveals four converging elements that generate sustained political instability:

1. An Acute Essential Economic Shock: Rapid inflation in food, fuel, or energy prices, sudden subsidy rollbacks, or structural labor displacement that directly threatens household living standards7.

2. Deep Perceived Injustice: High group relative deprivation and status anxiety, where material hardship is interpreted not as an unavoidable misfortune, but as the direct outcome of corruption, elite self-dealing, and procedural bias2.

3. Decentralized Digital Networks: Engagement-driven platform architectures that amplify moral outrage, erode traditional elite authority, and enable rapid mass coordination3.

4. Institutional Rigidity and Repressive Escalation: State apparatuses that refuse institutional dialogue, lack collective bargaining channels, and deploy moderate or indiscriminate repression—igniting a backfire effect that expands civil resistance into systemic rebellion9.

Sustained political instability takes hold when these four dynamics reinforce one another. An unaddressed cost-of-living shock generates widespread group relative deprivation, which is rapidly amplified across engagement-driven digital networks2. When a rigid state apparatus misinterprets these networked gatherings as security threats and deploys moderate police violence, it confirms public perceptions of procedural injustice9. This reaction transforms local economic claims into demands for political regime change9. Conversely, societies that maintain open political opportunity structures, enforce procedural fairness, leverage tripartite bargaining, and protect vulnerable households through responsive social safety nets absorb economic volatility successfully9. By channeling public dissatisfaction into democratic reform rather than political violence, resilient institutions preserve social cohesion and navigate structural economic transformations9.

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