Global Economic Meltdown, Political Unrest

BOSTON — I wrote a rather nerdy column in February about the Davies J-Curve, the political science theory put forth by James C. Davies in the 1950s.

Davies' idea was simple but powerful: Political unrest occurs when a people's rising expectations — about how much money they can make, what they can buy, whether they have enough food or medicine — are suddenly dashed by, let's say, a global economic crisis that follows the longest expansion in decades.

Here's how professor Davies put it, in that special language of academia:

"Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. People then subjectively fear that ground gained with great effort will be quite lost; their mood becomes revolutionary."Full Story