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Authoritarian regimes (noted in purple), where political protest is highly restricted, are differentiated from democracies (noted in blue), which range from highly defective ones, such as Russia (which holds free-but not necessarily fair-elections, and where political participation and rule of law is restricted) to stable and advanced democracies like Slovakia.

To assess to what extent civil society can protest, negotiate and participate freely in the political decision-making process, we introduce the composite indicator of "civic engagement." This consists of the BTI indicator scores for social capital, traditions of civil society, conflict management, and civil society participation.

Of the 28 countries where political stability has eroded, 12 countries are autocracies. Bahrain, Thailand, Tunisia, and Venezuela stand out in this list, because their level of social inclusion is far above the average of all BTI countries (4.85). However, as we have seen in the case of Bahrain (discrimination against the Shi'ites) and Thailand (uneven distribution between rural and urban areas), social inclusion is a major factor with regard to political unrest.

In Venezuela, the regime builds its legitimacy on social inclusiveness but fails on most of the other indicators; in Tunisia (as of January 2011, when the country reports were written), the overall positive socioeconomic assessment still includes mass unemployment among the youth and a rural-urban divide similar to Thailand's.

However, it is misleading to reduce the revolts in the Arab world to socioeconomic factors, even if, as with Egypt, Jordan and Yemen, social exclusion and impoverishment of large parts of the population remain significant. In those cases, demands for political participation and noncorrupt governance played the dominant role.

Authoritarian regimes with a low level of social inclusion lack what we call input and output legitimacy. The low level of input legitimacy can be derived both from the low overall scores for political participation rights and the rule of law, and from the equally low levels of civic engagement. Even Egypt, for example, with a relatively high score for social capital and civil society traditions, scores just below the global average of 5.08. The low level of output legitimacy (4 or fewer points for the composite indicator of social inclusion) applies to 30 out of the 53 autocracies assessed in the BTI. In that sense, Bahrain, Thailand, Tunisia, Venezuela, and even Jordan belong to the slightly more legitimized half of autocratic regimes.

The lack of legitimization by consent or output explains why political unrest, as it gains space to express itself in an authoritarian setting, tends to demand regime change-and often violently.

Civics, Politics and Stability
In terms of input legitimacy, the 16 democracies that suffered the strongest setbacks in political stability in recent years cover the spectrum from a semi-authoritarian regime like Russia and a highly polarized and unstable democracy like Guatemala to a poor but (until recently) stable democracy like Mali with a high degree of civic engagement.

An interesting example of the ways in which the capacity of a society and the government to channel popular demands can avoid political unrest has long been Mali. The combination of a low level of socioeconomic development and governance shortcomings would make it seem like a sure candidate for political instability. But despite recent events, Mali scores well not only in civil society participation but also in social capital and traditions of civil society. However, the negative trend in the composite "civic engagement" indicator is due to decreasing scores in conflict management relating to deficiencies in addressing the conflict with the Tuaregs in the north, a failure that led to the military coup d'etat in March 2012. Apart from Mali, Senegal and Honduras, the other defective democracies in this sample have neither the social trust, the traditions of civil society, nor governments capable of pursuing effective consensus-building. Social unrest and political instability take on a decidedly more regime-challenging character when the government simply cannot deliver acceptable levels of social inclusion (output legitimacy) on top of its low levels of meaningful civic and political participation and trust.

The results of this mix of low levels of social inclusion and regime legitimacy can be seen in Guatemala and Mexico. The linkage to the high levels of social exclusion is clearly visible. As the BTI Mexico-country report states, "There is [...] an obvious connection between the lack of opportunities for the young, associated with weak job creation over the last 20-30 years, and the recruitment capacity of the drug cartels."

Political stability is slightly more advanced in Ecuador and Honduras, but is challenged by polarization and social conflict. In several of the African countries with increased political instability, our country reports note a combination of government corruption, police violence and fundamental threats to public safety, directly related to socioeconomic conflicts-often crime or disputes about land tenure and distribution. The quality of democracy in these countries is often low, with political participation rights seriously (and increasingly) limited.

All the countries with increased political instability discussed here demonstrate in varying degrees the nexus between social exclusion and political unrest. The concrete shape that political unrest takes, however, depends on the context of the respective country and is directly linked to the quality of democracy and civic engagement.

In closed political systems, the authoritarian rulers either manage to repress unrest or, as was recently seen in the Arab world, are swept away by a wave of demonstrations triggered not solely by socioeconomic demands, but by calls for democratization and better governance. In defective democracies, much depends on the social capital and the willingness of the government to build consensus and cooperate with civil society to keep social protest from escalating.

In consolidating democracies, social demands often are transported by a more or less finely woven network of parties, interest groups and civil society organizations, which act as intermediaries in the political arena and keep social conflicts from escalating.

In that sense, the opening argument is probably best inverted: it is not only the degree of social inclusion that defines the quality of democracy; it is also the quality of democracy that defines to what extent social demands can be negotiated and met.

ENDNOTES:

1. www.bti-project.org
2. www.sgi-network.org
3. www.americasquarterly.org/hartmann
4. All individual indicator scores can be directly linked to the respective chapter in each country report, all of which are freely accessible at the above mentioned web pages. While the SGI combines qualitative (country reports) and quantitative indicators (external statistical data) in determining the scores, the BTI uses external reference indicators only to be contextualized in the qualitative assessment of the country report.
5. For the full Bertlesmann Foundation report please visit www.sgi-network.org.