Though the bull market for metals and energy may be ending, global food prices remain stubbornly high. The inflation-adjusted FAO Food Price Index is down from the near historic heights of 2007-08 and 2011 but still higher than at any point in the previous 30 years, putting a brake on several decades of progress in reducing world hunger.

High prices have also thrust food back onto the state security agenda. Food prices may have been among the factors that drew people into the streets across the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010, and in 2007-08, food price spikes led to protests and riots in 48 countries. Tellingly, these protests were most prevalent in Africa and Asia, which together are home to 92 percent of the world’s poor and chronically food insecure. Careful analysis bears out what has become conventional wisdom among food experts: high food prices, as measured by global commodity indexes, are most destabilizing in poor countries.

But poverty isn’t the only mediating factor. Food is an inherently political commodity, affected by subsidies, land policies, and other government interventions. What kind of government, then, is most likely to experience food-related instability? In a recently published article in the Journal of Peace Research, Stephan Haggard and I explore this question, assessing how autocracies and democracies mediate the relationship between global food prices and urban unrest in Africa and Asia from 1961 to 2010.

For the complete article, please see New Security Beat.