ABSTRACT
The Feierabends have taken blocks of time for their data but, for the most part, at the time they wrote this article, had not separated out for analysis the differences in instability within a nation over time. One unstable occurrence in Portugal should be roughly equal to twenty instances of the same kind of instability in the United States. Although political instability is a concept that can be explicated in more than one way, the definition used in this analysis limits its meaning to aggressive, politically relevant behaviors. Political instability is identified as aggressive behavior. It should then result from situations of unrelieved, socially experienced frustration. Such situations may be typified as those in which levels of social expectations, aspirations, and needs are raised for many people for significant periods of time, and yet remain unmatched by equivalent levels of satisfactions.
