Domestic Civil Unrest as a Systems Interaction
Uncertainty, Mobilization, and Escalation in the United States
Civil unrest in the United States is often described in moral, ideological, or cultural terms. Protests are framed as expressions of grievance; riots are framed as pathologies or political symbols. These approaches obscure the mechanisms through which unrest actually emerges, escalates, and spreads. A more useful lens treats unrest as a system: a set of interacting actors operating in space under conditions of uncertainty, where outcomes are shaped less by intent than by sequencing, signaling, and institutional response.
This paper advances an actor-driven systems framework for understanding contemporary U.S. unrest. It centers on how executive-level uncertainty, protest mobilization, media amplification, and police or state response interact to produce protest, riot formation, and spillover across cities.
I. The Core System
Domestic unrest operates through four interacting layers.
At the top of the system is elite claim-making and executive policy signaling. Statements, threats, or assertions by executive actors—whether or not immediately followed by formal action—introduce uncertainty about intent, scope, and enforcement. This uncertainty is often more destabilizing than policy itself, because it compresses expectations and lowers thresholds for action before rules are clear.
The second layer consists of national media and digital platforms, which capture and redistribute this uncertainty. Platforms do not transmit full policy contexts. They transmit fragments: claims, images, isolated confrontations, partial implementations. This fragmented transmission amplifies volatility rather than resolving it and ensures that different localities receive different slices of the same unresolved policy moment.
The third layer is protest mobilization. Mobilization is not centrally coordinated and is rarely nationally synchronized. Instead, it often occurs through localized coupling, where one city reacts to developments in another city mediated by selective coverage, rather than to a comprehensive national picture.
The fourth layer is police, state, or federal response, which ultimately determines local outcomes. Enforcement posture, timing, and intervention choices shape whether mobilization stabilizes, dissipates, or escalates into disorder.
No single layer produces unrest on its own. Escalation emerges from their interaction.
II. Uncertainty as the Primary Volatility Driver
A central insight of this framework is that domestic political volatility is frequently initiated by uncertainty, not by executed policy. Executive claim-making—public statements, threats, or signaling—creates ambiguity about what will happen, who will act, and under what authority. This ambiguity generates short-run volatility precisely because outcomes are unknown.
In some cases, uncertainty is later resolved through executive orders, deployment authorizations, or operational directives. Resolution does not necessarily calm the system. Depending on how clearly policy is articulated and implemented, formal action may dampen volatility or trigger new rounds of mobilization and spillover.
Importantly, uncertainty does not move through the country as a single, coherent signal. National platforms fragment it. Cities are exposed to different claims, images, and interpretations at various times. This piecemeal amplification explains why unrest spreads unevenly and asynchronously rather than as a uniform national wave.
III. Protest Mobilization and Partial Coupling
Protest mobilization follows uncertainty, but not in a coordinated or straightforward way. Mobilization often occurs through partial coupling, where exposure to unrest or enforcement action in one salient locality lowers thresholds for action in another locality.
A city may mobilize in response to events in one external city without awareness of parallel mobilizations elsewhere. Media exposure to a single case—especially one involving visible force or institutional escalation—can be sufficient to trigger local protest activity.
Mobilization itself, however, is not unrest. Protesters overwhelmingly do not plan riots or disorder. Protest remains expressive and symbolic unless it encounters coercive authority under volatile conditions.
IV. Police and State Response as the Escalation Gate
A key dependency in this system is that there is no riot without enforcement interaction. Protest without coercive counter-actors remains a demonstration. Escalation is not an intrinsic property of crowds; it is an interactional outcome.
The timing and posture of enforcement at the moment of mobilization are decisive. When police are absent or lightly postured as crowds assemble, early protest dynamics often stabilize through diffusion, symbolic action, or informal self-regulation. When police are visibly pre-scripted—armored, staged, or deployed in advance—the protest space already begins to charge.
Interventions do not resolve protests. They create transition windows. Arrests, dispersal orders, or force introduce uncertainty that reorganizes crowd behavior. Escalation, when it occurs, is typically produced during these transitional moments rather than through collective intent.
In the contemporary United States, this dynamic extends beyond municipal policing. National Guard or military involvement introduces a qualitatively different signal. Even the possibility of federal deployment generates nationwide volatility by introducing uncertainty about authority, rules of engagement, and precedent.
V. A Working Definition of Riot
To avoid politicized or ambiguous usage, this framework adopts a strict, theory-based definition.
A riot is an emergent form of collective behavior that occurs when protest mobilization loses coordination and transitions into sustained disorder through interaction with authority under conditions of uncertainty.
This definition is behavioral rather than normative. It does not depend on grievance, ideology, or moral judgment. Riots are not planned strategies; they are failure modes of protest produced when uncertainty, enforcement intervention, and crowd dynamics intersect.
This distinction matters analytically. It allows protest, civil disobedience, vandalism, and riot to be differentiated without collapsing them into moral categories or media labels.
VI. The Escalation Ladder
Escalation unfolds through a bounded but nonlinear ladder.
At the top is elite claim-making, which introduces uncertainty through signaling. This may or may not be followed by executive decision-making, such as executive orders or deployment authorizations. The period between claim and decision often produces the highest short-run volatility.
On the ground, perceptions are shaped unevenly through selective platform amplification. Local actors receive fragments rather than full narratives, compressing time horizons and lowering thresholds for action.
Finally, state repression or enforcement responses—through police, the National Guard, or federal forces—condition outcomes. Intervention points act as transition moments that determine whether mobilization stabilizes or escalates.
These stages are not strictly linear. Feedback from enforcement outcomes can shape further elite signaling, moving the system up or down the ladder in uneven and asynchronous ways.
VII. Case Illustration: Chicago, June 10, 2025
Mid-June 2025 illustrates the system in practice. Federal-level signaling related to potential military deployment in Los Angeles generated a national volatility window by introducing uncertainty about the scope and use of coercive authority. This uncertainty did not immediately produce uniform mobilization, but it activated latent mobilization capacity across multiple cities by lowering thresholds for action.
As this uncertainty propagated through fragmented media coverage, localized mobilization emerged unevenly. Once military deployment was realized in Los Angeles, the uncertainty window was partially resolved, but in a manner that affirmed expectations of escalation rather than stabilizing them. The confirmation of deployment reinforced perceptions on the ground that coercive escalation was underway, further sustaining and legitimizing mobilization in other locales.
On June 10 in Chicago, protesters mobilizing in the downtown core encountered a heavy and visibly pre-positioned police presence at the outset. This enforcement posture interacted with nationally transmitted uncertainty originating in California and with the confirmation effect produced by military deployment. The resulting escalation reflected Chicago’s specific protest–police interaction at the moment of mobilization, rather than an independent or pre-planned trajectory toward a riot.
This case illustrates spillover mechanics clearly: executive signaling created an uncertainty window; platforms fragmented and amplified it; the realization of military deployment reinforced mobilization capacity; localized coupling transmitted effects across cities; and local enforcement posture determined whether mobilization transitioned into riotous behavior.
VIII. Implications
Viewing unrest as an actor-driven system clarifies several recurring puzzles. It explains why similar grievances produce different outcomes in different cities. It accounts for uneven and staggered contagion. It separates mobilization from escalation. And it shows why a heavy enforcement posture at the onset of mobilization can be more consequential than later intervention.
Most importantly, it reframes riots not as moral failures or strategic choices, but as emergent interactional outcomes. This reframing enables more precise analysis, better early-warning models, and more disciplined public discussion.
Domestic unrest is not a mystery. It is a system. Understanding how its parts interact is the first step toward understanding why it escalates where it does—and why it does not elsewhere.
About the Author
Christopher Sweat is the founder of GrayStak, where he develops analytical frameworks for understanding domestic political volatility, protest dynamics, and escalation. His work focuses on how executive signaling, institutional response, and collective behavior interact across local and national contexts in the United States.
Disclaimer
This paper presents an analytical framework for understanding domestic protest, unrest, and escalation dynamics. It is intended for descriptive and analytical purposes only and does not advocate for specific policies, enforcement actions, or protest tactics, nor does it constitute operational, legal, or security guidance.