The International Monetary Fund has warned that rising world food prices threatens democracies in poor countries. It warns the crisis will cause riots and civil conflict and widen the gap between rich and poor.
In a new paper, IMF researchers economist Rabah Arezki and Markus Brueckner of the University of Adelaide's School of Economics warn that the crisis will have massive political consequences. "Our empirical results are broadly consistent with the often made claim by policy makers and the press that food price increases put at stake the socio-economic and political stability of the world's poorest countries,'' the researchers say.
The study also looked at whether domestic conflict caused by rising food prices increased after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. "There is some evidence that for the post-1990 period, the effect of food price changes on intra-state conflict has become significantly larger,'' they say.
In the short term, the findings are relevant for developing countries. But food prices will affect the politics of the developed world. In the end, it will come to one thing for all of us wherever we may be: we eat, or we fight.
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