Titled “World Protests: A Study of Key Protest Issues in the 21st Century,” the study comes from a team of researchers with German think tank Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a nonprofit organization based at Columbia University and adds to a growing body of literature about our era of increasing protests. Looking closely at more than 900 protest movements or episodes across 101 countries and territories, the authors came to the conclusion that we are living through a period of history like the years around 1848, 1917 or 1968 “when large numbers of people rebelled against the way things were, demanding change.”

But why? Here, the authors highlight one particular problem: democratic failure. Their research found that a majority of the protest events they recorded — 54 percent — were prompted by a perceived failure of political systems or representation. Roughly 28 percent included demands for what the authors described as “real democracy,” the most of any demand found by the researchers. Other themes included inequality, corruption and the lack of action over climate change. But the study’s authors say policymakers do not respond adequately.

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