People Get Ready: Optimal timing of Revolution

Carmen Camacho (1, 2) , Waleed Hassan (3, 4)

1 PSE - Paris School of Economics
2 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
3 UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
4 KU Leuven VIVES

We study here whether and when a social movement can turn into a successful revolution and modify the production system. To do so, the dynamics of social unrest is de_ned as a function of the number of discriminated workers, and their organizational skills, wage inequalities, and retaliation. Then, taking the evolution of social unrest into account, we obtain the optimal time for a revolution as the moment which maximizes discriminated workers' lifetime welfare. It is proven that if unrest increases with time and if a revolution does improve the discriminated's welfare, then a revolution arises independently of the initial state and the characteristics of the economy. Whenever the gains are high enough, then a revolution arises immediately. Worth noting, we show that even if social movement loses momentum, a revolution arises if the initial mass of discontent is sizeable or the system is so repressive that it becomes necessary to revolt.

Keywords: Social unrest; Revolution dynamics; Optimal switching time

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Carmen Camacho, Waleed Hassan. People Get Ready: Optimal timing of Revolution. 2023. ⟨halshs-03372991v2⟩