Urban Social Disorder 3.0: A global, city-level event dataset of political mobilization and disorder

The world’s population is increasingly concentrated in cities. Research on urbanization’s implications for peace and security has been hampered by a lack of comparable data on political mobilization and violence at the city level across space and through time, however. Urban Social Disorder 3.0 is a detailed event dataset covering 186 national capitals and major urban centers from 1960 to 2014. It includes 12 types of nonviolent and violent events, detailing the actors involved and their targets, start and end dates of each event, and the number of participants and deaths. We provide an overview of the main features of these data, and trends in urban social disorder across space and time. We demonstrate the utility of the dataset by analyzing the relationship between city size and the frequency of lethal disorder events. We find a positive relationship between city population and lethal urban social disorder, unlike previous studies. These new data raise promising avenues for future research on democratization; climate change and food security; and spillovers between different forms of mobilization and violence.

[1]  H. Urdal,et al.  Group organization, elections and urban political mobilization in the developing world , 2021, Democratization.

[2]  H. Buhaug,et al.  Security implications of climate change: A decade of scientific progress , 2021, Journal of Peace Research.

[3]  Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Comercio y Desarrollo.  World Economic Situation and Prospects 2020 , 2020, World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP).

[4]  Magnus Öberg,et al.  Organized violence, 1989–2019 , 2020, Journal of Peace Research.

[5]  Henry Thomson.  Conflict termination, signals of state weakness and violent urban social disorder in the developing world , 2019, The Spatiality of Violence in Post-war Cities.

[6]  Henry Thomson.  Food and Power , 2019 .

[7]  Ellen Lust,et al.  Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding , 2018 .

[8]  Alison E. Post.  Cities and Politics in the Developing World , 2018 .

[9]  E. Glaeser,et al.  Transforming cities: does urbanization promote democratic change? , 2016, Transitions in Regional Economic Development.

[10]  Gudrun Østby,et al.  Rural–urban migration, inequality and urban social disorder: Evidence from African and Asian cities , 2016 .

[11]  S. Fox,et al.  Urban Geography and Protest Mobilization in Africa , 2016 .

[12]  D. Gollin,et al.  Urbanization with and without industrialization , 2015, Journal of Economic Growth.

[13]  S. Tarrow.  War, States, and Contention: A Comparative Historical Study , 2015 .

[14]  Adam Yeeles.  Weathering unrest , 2015 .

[15]  Cullen S. Hendrix,et al.  Global food prices, regime type, and urban unrest in the developing world , 2015 .

[16]  J. Wallace.  Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China , 2014 .

[17]  Erik Melander,et al.  Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset , 2013 .

[18]  R. Feenstra,et al.  The Next Generation of the Penn World Table , 2013 .

[19]  Erica Chenoweth,et al.  Unpacking nonviolent campaigns , 2013 .

[20]  H. Urdal,et al.  An urbanization bomb? Population growth and social disorder in cities , 2013 .

[21]  H. Urdal,et al.  Explaining Urban Social Disorder and Violence: An Empirical Study of Event Data from Asian and Sub-Saharan African Cities , 2012 .

[22]  Cullen S. Hendrix,et al.  Social Conflict in Africa: A New Database , 2012 .

[23]  Clionadh Raleigh,et al.  Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset , 2010 .

[24]  Paul Staniland.  Cities on Fire: Social Mobilization, State Policy, and Urban Insurgency , 2010 .

[25]  E. Glaeser,et al.  Trade and Circuses: Explaining Urban Giants , 1994 .

[26]  Charles C. Ragin,et al.  GLOBAL AND NATIONAL SOURCES OF POLITICAL PROTEST: THIRD WORLD RESPONSES TO THE DEBT CRISIS* , 1990 .