The escape from the 'Malthusian trap' can generate serious political upheavals. We analyze the demographic-structural mechanisms that generate such upheavals and develop a mathematical model of the respective processes. The model yields a forecast of political instability in African and West Asian countries for 2012-2050.

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The quantitative analysis of the Arab Spring events is a rather difficult task. Respective difficulties are related to the variety of factors affecting social instability, and to individual peculiarities of historical, cultural, socio-economic, and political processes in the region. As a result of the research, we found out that the processes of social and political destabilization in the countries of Arab Spring were caused by a complex set of factors. The most significant factors that tended to reduce the scale of sociopolitical destabilization during the Arab Spring have turned out to be the following: the ability of the government to reduce social tensions and the presence of “immunity” to internal conflicts. However, such indicators as structural and demographical characteristics and external influences turned out to be less significant in the context of the Arab Spring. It should be mentioned that the significance of the external influences indicator notably increases when the model is used to account for the death toll resultant from anti-government protests. We also discuss the possibility of applying the developed model of sociopolitical destabilization to forecast sociopolitical upheavals in future.

On the basis of the shifting mode of reproduction model it is shown that the transition of the Russian economic system to the growth stage is connected with its increasing monetization. Under the current monetary policy additional growth of money in the economy is possible through more active implementation of the new monetary mechanism, based on the reserve money of the central bank, issued for implementation of investment projects. Such a mechanism in conditions of a certain relationship among interest rates, rate of return, and the proportion between fiscal and credit emission for investment purposes calculated according to the model will create the necessary prerequisites for the transition of the Russian economy to the stage of growth.

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