The relationship between economic stress and political instability is not simple, but it is not random. Research into historical episodes of mass unrest -- from the food riots of 2007 to the Arab Spring to the pandemic-era protest waves -- identifies a cluster of preconditions that reliably precede social rupture. No single indicator is sufficient. All five in combination describe a structural state from which ordinary political management becomes difficult to sustain. The Coface Political Risk Index, which tracks these conditions annually across 166 countries, recorded a global average of 41.1 percent in 2025 -- the highest level since measurement began, exceeding the Covid-19 pandemic peak by 2.8 percentage points. Sixty-eight of those countries scored higher than in the prior year. One hundred and six countries are now above their pre-pandemic average.

Coface describes the elevated baseline not as a temporary disruption but as a structural new normal, and advises factoring it into development and investment decisions. The main drivers are consistent: armed conflicts, violent domestic unrest, institutional fragility, and declining civil liberties. The 2024 global election cycle, which involved 70 countries, left behind a significant residue of unresolved political disputes, weakened opposition channels, and populations whose expectations of change went unmet.

The five indicators below do not predict specific events. They describe the material conditions in which events become probable. Each operates through a different mechanism. Together, they define the profile of an economy in which the threshold for mass political action is structurally low -- where a commodity price spike, a currency depreciation, a failed harvest, or a contested election can function as the trigger for unrest that would not, in a differently structured economy, have been triggered at all.

The first two indicators are closely linked: the trajectory of real wages and the rate of youth unemployment. When wages fall in real terms -- when nominal wage growth fails to keep pace with inflation -- working households experience a gradual liquidation of purchasing power. The effect is cumulative and largely invisible in aggregate GDP statistics until it reaches a breaking point. A government that reports positive GDP growth while real wages are contracting is reporting an improving economy for a declining portion of its population. The gap between those two descriptions is where grievance accumulates.

Youth unemployment operates as an accelerant. Young people who cannot enter formal employment do not simply defer their economic participation. They accumulate grievances, build alternative social networks, and become available for mobilisation. The ILO's Global Employment Trends for Youth (2024) found that rates in low- and lower-middle-income countries remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels, with the highest concentrations in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Bangladesh carries particularly acute risk in 2026, with analysts citing youth unemployment and institutional distrust as primary factors ahead of elections scheduled for February. Nepal recorded violent protest activity throughout 2025, with parliamentary elections set for March 2026. Pakistan faces a compressed wage environment following 2025 flood-related inflation and IMF-mandated subsidy reductions that have cut real incomes for the working poor.

The third indicator is food import dependency: the proportion of a country's nutritional requirements met through imported supply. Countries with high dependency are exposed to global commodity price volatility directly and immediately, in a way that domestically self-sufficient economies are not. When wheat prices rose sharply in 2022 following the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine, the most severely affected countries were not those nearest to the fighting but those most reliant on imported grain. This is the structural logic of food import dependency: the shock originates elsewhere, but the consequences land locally, within weeks, at the point of sale.

The FAO's Food Import Dependency Index identifies a cluster of countries -- predominantly in Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Middle East, and small island states -- where food import bills represent a significant share of foreign exchange earnings. The exposure is compounded by currency weakness. A government that cannot maintain its exchange rate faces a food import bill that inflates automatically, without any change in global commodity prices. IMF-mandated subsidy reductions, which are a common conditionality requirement, withdraw the one policy instrument that partially insulates domestic food prices from global and currency volatility. The combination produces a mechanism by which external economic conditions are directly transmitted into the grocery prices of populations with no margin to absorb the increase.

The fourth indicator is the external debt service ratio: the share of government revenue consumed by payments on external obligations. At high levels, this ratio compresses the fiscal space available for public services, social transfers, and investment, while creating dependence on creditor goodwill for continued financing. The Global Sovereign Debt Monitor (Erlassjahr and Misereor, 2025) classifies 47 countries as carrying a "very heavy" external debt burden and a further 28 as "heavy." Approximately 40 percent of countries worldwide fall into one of these categories. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion reaches 70 percent -- 34 of 49 countries.

The cost of new borrowing has risen sharply. Average interest rates on new government bonds in Sub-Saharan Africa reached approximately 8 percent in 2024, up from approximately 4 percent in 2020. Ninety percent of Global South external public debt is denominated in foreign currencies, principally the US dollar. This means that any domestic currency depreciation inflates the real debt burden without any additional borrowing. Mongolia and Rwanda moved into the "very heavy" category in 2025. A government that devotes the majority of its revenue to debt service has no capacity to absorb a shock. It cannot raise wages, subsidise food, or expand employment programmes. The fiscal space for response is already spent before the crisis arrives.

The fifth indicator is the most difficult to quantify but the most decisive in determining whether economic stress produces political rupture. Countries with high levels of institutional trust, perceived governmental legitimacy, and functioning mechanisms for peaceful grievance expression can absorb significant economic pressure without social breakdown. Countries without these conditions cannot. The difference is not that one set of populations is more patient or more politically sophisticated than the other. It is that the structural availability of peaceful channels for expressing frustration determines whether frustration finds expression there or elsewhere.

The Coface index identifies declining civil liberties, institutional fragility, and the aftermath of contested elections as primary drivers of elevated political risk. Burkina Faso and Niger, both now under military governance, represent the most extreme expression of legitimacy collapse. Tunisia, Senegal, Indonesia, the Philippines, Morocco, Kenya, and Madagascar are among those flagged at elevated risk. In each case, the political risk is not separable from the economic conditions. The economy compresses the available options; the institutional environment determines whether any option remains open short of the street. When institutional channels for expressing economic frustration are closed or discredited, expression moves. This is not a prediction of irrationality. It is a description of the structural logic by which economic grievance becomes political event.

The five indicators do not cause unrest. They describe the conditions in which the threshold drops low enough that an ordinary trigger is sufficient. An election result, a subsidy cut, a price spike, a police action: any of these is, in a differently structured economy, a manageable event. In an economy where all five indicators are simultaneously elevated, the same event is the match. The data on which countries are in that position is not projected or modelled. It is current, published, and publicly available. The question it raises is not whether the next wave of unrest is predictable. It is why prediction has so rarely produced preparation.