Challenges of predicting social conflicts in the context of crises and hybrid threats

Abstract

Climate change and environmental degradation have affected the entire world to varying degrees and are the main source of new crises and hybrid threats. All states and societies have a difficult and, at the same time, new responsibility to change their social ways of life, which until now have led to environmental degradation. In this process, a part of the world's humanity will experience great difficulties and overcoming them may become the cause of a global wave of social conflicts. It is necessary to avoid the rise of such a wave because its consequences can be very dangerous. This is evidenced by the consequences of Russian aggression in Ukraine. The article examines the challenges of predicting social conflicts, which are determined by the environment of crises and hybrid threats and the tendency of its expansion. The study revealed that the prediction of social conflicts is limited by groups of challenges of a hierarchical nature: 1. Objectively existing threats and the challenges of predicting their development, e.g. the effects of climate change, the effects of ongoing war. 2. The challenges of predicting the subjective perception of threats, which arise from the way groups of people perceive hybrid threats and evaluate the preventive behavior of authorities. 3. Methodological challenges caused by the need to create a paradigm of the connection between hybrid threats and their subjective perception (security theory). 4. Challenges in the choice of research methods caused by the limited possibilities to rely on the extrapolation of the previously established relationship between threats and their subjective perception. Some of the research results are presented in the conclusions. One of the most important of them emphasizes the need to rethink the concepts of freedom and security and their relationship to successfully guarantee the peace of public life in the context of crises and hybrid threats.