On the morning of December 17^th 2010, a Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire in front of the local governor’s office in protest of having his cart and its inventory confiscated by a corrupt police force. What began as act of individual protest against the Tunisian state evolved into mass demonstrations across the arab world significantly altering the political landscape. This paper explores how a change to the economic condition of the individual affects the emergence of mass protest. I step away from the use of traditional case study and econometric analysis to develop two agent based models of protest that allow exploration to changes in the average level of utility, its distribution, and growth on the onset, size, and frequency of protest. This paper discusses 14 separate findings on how utility levels in a system of agents affect the magnitude, frequency, onset, and structure of civil conflict. The most surprising finding in this paper is the bifurcated relationship between utility distribution and the emergence of civil conflict. This specific result provides an plausible explanation for why empirical analysis has thus far been unable to correlate income inequality and civil violence.

Understanding how individual condition affects the start, formation, and the magnitude of civil unrest is an important consideration for central governments and international organizations interested in social stability. By examining the complexity of behavior, that exists between government action, individual condition, and the perceived legitimacy of country wide institutions, central authorities can craft better policies that maximize growth while protecting the most vulnerable in their society.