The key countries at the heart of the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Image adapted from Wikimedia Commons User:Danalm000.

What are the chances that the revolutions of the Arab Spring succeed at creating democracies? According to a regression model created Jay Ulfelder: maybe.

[T]he probability that each of those new democracies would make it to their sixth birthday…:

• Tunisia: 82%
• Egypt: 48%
• Libya: 89%

Ulfelder’s blog post is worth the read. It’s an excellent (if somewhat technical) example of how to do (and write up) some quick research, and how the ability to blog is changing the way scientists share ideas, and get feedback (check out the comments section).

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2012. Will the New Arab Democracies Survive?, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Social WorldNo Comments » - Tags: democracy, politics, research, revolution

C.B.P. Grey explains how primary elections work. Right now the Republican Party is conducting its primaries to choose a candidate to face Pres. Obama in the November general elections, and all their debates, as well as the sequence of primaries highlighting different parts of the United States, provides for a quite interesting view of the social and political diversity in the country. The video below, however, focuses on the details of the voting process.

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2012. How Primary Elections Work, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Social WorldNo Comments » - Tags: civics, politics

The Fund for Peace has been doing a lot of thinking about what it takes for a country to be considered peaceful, and what it takes for a state to fail. For the last seven years they’ve been putting together maps of the world with an index of how stable different countries are.

Finland - the most sustainable state, at least according to the Failed State Index.

While it’s pretty in-depth and makes for rather sobering reading, it’s worth taking a look at the criteria they’ve come up with to determine a country’s stability. It may be useful to include some of this information in the cycle where we focus on peace.

Their criteria for instability include:

• Demographic pressure (such as having too many young adults, as we’ve seen in Egypt)
• Amount of refugees and internally displaced peoples (refugees are people who’ve crossed international borders). Both leaving or entering refugees can undermine stability.
• Historical Injustice – communities can have an understandably hard time forgetting the past, just look at Isreal/Palestine.
• Brain Drain – when countries start to fail, the first to leave are the ones who can afford to. Yet these intellectuals and professionals, with their college degree are vital for creating a stable and prosperous country.
• Inequality – especially when driven by active discrimination (wealth inequality is something to watch out for).
• Economic decline – pushes trade into the black market and increases criminality and corruption.
• Illegitimacy of the state – if people don’t believe the people in government have everyone in the country’s best interests at heart, and are only looking out for themselves and their friends, then there’s probably going to be trouble.
• Public Services go kaput – It’s a really bad sign when the government can meet people’s basic needs – like picking up the garbage.
• The Rule of Law goes kaput – when you’re ruled by the caprice of men, and your rights under the law are not respected, you may begin to consider and agitate for other options for government.
• Personal Armies – forces that are tied to individual leaders, like private militias or super-secret police for example, are very damaging to a country’s cohesion.
• Fighting elites – healthy countries need robust arguments in their political class – think checks and balances – but it can go too far and lead to things like extreme nationalism and ethnic cleansing.
• Invasion – both overt invasion and covert meddling in the affairs of a country are unhealthy for that state’s stability.

It’s also very nice that you can download their index data as a MS Excel spreadsheet, which you can let students analyze to answer their own research questions. For example, I was wondering what was the difference between the best, the worst and the USA, so I plotted this graph.

Comparing the best (Finland), worst (Somalia) and the USA using the Fund for Peace's Failed State Indicies.

The USA is much closer to Finland than Somalia, thank goodness, but should probably watch out for that Uneven Development (wealth inequality).

I think something like this would make a good experiential exercise for the science of geography.

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2011. What's Needed for a Nation's Peace, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Experiential, Social World, Useful websitesNo Comments » - Tags: data analysis, data sources, geography, graphing, human geography, math, politics, science

These maps show the difference between last winter's average temperatures and the long term average (from 1951-1980). Notice that the scale goes up to 11. Image from Hansen and Sato, 2011.

For much of the U.S., last winter was pretty cold. If you look at the maps above, you can see that the eastern United States was up to 4 °C colder than normal in December. However, if you look a little further north into Canada, you’ll see a broad, pink region, where the temperatures were up to 11 °C warmer than normal.

The rate at which the world has been warming has been accelerating. It’s been interesting watching the predictions of the relatively crude computer models of the 1980′s coming true.

The red line show that the actual warming has been awfully close to the middle scenario predicted by climate modelers. The figure was slightly adapted from Hansen and Sato (2011).

Although, it’s really the broadest, more general predictions that tend to be more reliable. One of those predictions, that’s been consistent for a long time and with a lot of different models, is that the poles would warm significantly faster than the rest of the planet.

What’s also been interesting, if somewhat depressing, is seeing the political consensus lag behind the scientific consensus. Twenty years ago there was a real debate in the scientific community about if global temperatures were rising. Now scientists argue mainly about what to do: reduce greenhouse gas pollution, adapt to the inevitable, or some mix of the two. Yet two weeks ago the House Science Committee heard testimony from a professor of marketing, advocating for an end to all government funding of climate research. Perhaps the belief is that if we don’t look it won’t happen.

Curiously, even research teams funded by people who politically oppose global warming, are just confirming the results of all the other scientific groups. Unsurprisingly, they’re now getting heat from their former supporters.

At the same time, Kate (on climatesafety.org) observes that NASA’s James Hansen has had to add a new color (pink on the graphs at the top of the page) to his climate anomaly maps because of the unexpectedly large warming over last winter.

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2011. Global Warming: We need new colors., Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Natural World, Social WorldNo Comments » - Tags: climate, environmental science, global warming, politics

iCivics.com has an interesting set of online games that simulate the different branches of the U.S. government. It comes highly recommended by our local geography specialist.

“I think it’s my new addiction,” he said, “iCivics instead of Call of Duty.”

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2011. iCivics: Civics Simulations, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Social World, Useful websitesNo Comments » - Tags: civics, government, online resources, politics, simulations

The Economist has a wonderful graphic of the countries in the Arab World. Click on the countries for information about the country, including things related to civil rights.

(found via the Daily Dish)

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2011. Geography of the Arab World, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Social WorldNo Comments » - Tags: civil rights, Egypt, geography, middle east, politics, revolution

A successful democratic revolution may well need a relatively wealthy and educated population, however, one of the main things that seem to drive revolutions themselves is just how many young adults there are in a country.

… countries in which 60 percent or more of the population is under the age of 30 are more likely to experience outbreaks of civil conflict than those where age structures are more balanced.
– Madsen (2011): The Demographics of Revolt

When there are lots of young people getting to the age when they are just trying to find jobs and start families, but the country’s economy can’t grow fast enough to provide all the jobs they need, then you have a lot of dissatisfied, disaffected people with time on their hands; it’s a tinderbox ready for any spark.

I recently attended a talk by Jennifer Scuibba where she laid out the case. Scuibba’s blog, also has a
a very good set of links that look at the age demographics of the current revolutions in the Arab world.

One of the links goes to a report by Richard Cincotta and others (Cincotta et al., 2003) that used this type of demographic analysis to figure out which countries were most likely to end up in conflict.

Countries at risk of civil war (Cincotta et al., 2003).

They talk about the demographic transition, “a population’s shift from high to low rates of birth and death,” as being a key factor in reducing the likelihood of conflicts. Therefore, they suggest:

… a range of policies promoting small, healthy and better educated families and long lives among populations in developing countries seems likely to encourage greater political stability
– Cincotta et al., 2003: The Security Demographic – Population and Civil Conflict After the Cold War

If civil conflict leads to a successful democratic transition, then political stability is probably not a net benefit.

However, once there is a democratic revolution, the same large cohort of young people still exists, which could make a country like Egypt unstable for quite a while, until it goes through the demographic transition. After all:

…countries do not become mature democracies overnight. They usually go through a rocky transition, where mass politics mixes with authoritarian elete politics in a volatile way. Statistical evidence covering the past two centuries shows that in this transitional phase of democratization, countries become more aggressive and war-prone, not less …
– Mansfield and Snyder (1995): Democratization and War

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2011. Too many Young Adults: Reasons for Revolution, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Social WorldNo Comments » - Tags: article, demographics, government, political science, politics, revolution, war

Arasmus is mapping all the events that are happening in Libya. A lot of it’s confusing, things are changing very fast, and who knows where it will end up.

View Mapping Violence Against Pro-Democracy Protests in Libya in a larger map

Citing this post: Urbano, L., 2011. Keeping up with Libya, Retrieved May 19th, 2012, from Montessori Muddle: http://MontessoriMuddle.org/ .
Attribution (Curator's Code ): Via: ᔥ Montessori Muddle; Hat tip: ↬ Montessori Muddle.

Posted in Social WorldNo Comments » - Tags: libya, middle east, North Africa, politics, revolution