Modelling Population Dynamics of Social Protests in Time and Space: The Reaction-Diffusion Approach

Sergei Petrovskii, Weam Alharbi, Abdulqader Alhomairi and Andrew Morozov
Additional contact information
Sergei Petrovskii: School of Mathematics and Actuarial Science, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Weam Alharbi: Mathematics Department, Faculty of Science, Tabuk University, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia
Abdulqader Alhomairi: Department of Curriculum and Teaching Methods, Faculty of Education and Art, Tabuk University, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia
Andrew Morozov: School of Mathematics and Actuarial Science, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

Mathematics, 2020, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Understanding of the dynamics of riots, protests, and social unrest more generally is important in order to ensure a stable, sustainable development of various social groups, as well as the society as a whole. Mathematical models of social dynamics have been increasingly recognized as a powerful research tool to facilitate the progress in this field. However, the question as to what should be an adequate mathematical framework to describe the corresponding social processes is largely open. In particular, a great majority of the previous studies dealt with non-spatial or spatially implicit systems, but the literature dealing with spatial systems remains meagre. Meanwhile, in many cases, the dynamics of social protests has a clear spatial aspect. In this paper, we attempt to close this gap partially by considering a spatial extension of a few recently developed models of social protests. We show that even a straightforward spatial extension immediately bring new dynamical behaviours, in particular predicting a new scenario of the protests’ termination.

Keywords: social dynamics; wave of protests; long transients; ghost attractor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/8/1/78/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/8/1/78/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:8:y:2020:i:1:p:78-:d:304768

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().