Characterizing social unrest as systemic risk

The focus in this chapter will be on the connection between systemic risks and social unrest. The question is in what way social unrests can be seen as systemic risks or at least as a part a systemic risk and what analytical consequences will follow from this analysis. For this purpose we will use a typology of risks that has been developed by the IRGC for their framework of risk governance. The model has been explicitly designed to apply to systemic risks and seems to be one of the most articulated models within risk research (IRGC, 2006 IRGC, 2008 Renn et al., 2007 Renn, 2008). Within this concept risks are ordered according to their dominant characteristics. Systemic risks show the following characteristics: complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and spill-over effects.