Where the risk is greatest that economic distress will foment social unrest

Political instability

A wider impact

Mar 19th 2009
From Economist.com

THE global economic crisis is already having a severe social impact in many countries, mainly by causing unemployment to rise quickly. The political impact may take longer to be felt: so far only two elected governments, in Iceland and Latvia, have been ousted after popular protests. More regime changes, possibly less peaceful ones, may follow as economic conditions worsen. A new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company to The Economist, assesses the political vulnerability of countries by looking at indicators of underlying stability, together with economic distress. For the coming year or so 95 countries are judged to be at high risk of instability, compared with 35 in 2007. The most vulnerable states, such as Zimbabwe, suffer from a toxic combination of bad government and a free-falling economy.

See the full report.

AP