In many resource-rich democracies, marginalized regions possess formal voice without substantive influence. This disconnect is central to understanding why democratic institutions, despite their presence, often fail to prevent conflict, reduce grievance, or build legitimacy in extractive zones.

The Mobility-Augmented Stability Index (MASI) addresses this by incorporating Access to Voice (A) as a structural factor in the prediction of subnational political instability. In this section, we define, conceptualize, and operationalize the “A” component of MASI and show how it captures the distance between participation and power.

Voice in the MASI Framework

MASI integrates four structural dimensions to assess regional fragility:

• M – Mobility: The ability of people to physically or economically exit a harmful environment.
• A – Access to Voice: The extent to which affected populations can shape the institutions and decisions that affect them.
• S – Spatial Burden: The degree to which a region bears the environmental, economic, or social costs of extraction.
• ΔW – Welfare Gap: The difference between actual well-being and what would be expected under more equitable resource governance.

Each variable captures a distinct but interrelated form of disempowerment. The “A” dimension is particularly critical in settings where democratic form does not align with democratic function.

What Does “Access to Voice” Mean?

The power to influence decisions and claim rights.

Access to Voice (A) is defined not merely as the right to vote or participate, but as the capacity to influence decisionsin ways that reflect community preferences, protect rights, and alter outcomes.

A region with low A has:

• Minimal or symbolic representation in national institutions
• Token appointments without policy leverage
• Development bodies that lack accountability to local populations
• Weak media, civil society, or legal advocacy channels
• Little or no impact on decisions related to extraction, redistribution, or environmental remediation

In contrast, a region with high A enjoys:

Legal avenues for redress and participation in enforcement

Substantive legislative or constitutional mechanisms for representation

Strong local institutions with binding authority

Transparent and accountable development programming

Inclusion in agenda-setting and policy design

Operationalizing A: Components and Indicators

To estimate the A dimension empirically, MASI disaggregates it into five measurable components:

Institutional Representation (A₁):

Presence and strength of regional representatives in key national policymaking bodies, and whether those representatives act independently or under centralized party control.

Policy Impact (A₂):

Historical evidence that regional advocacy or protest has led to substantive policy changes, budget allocations, or legal reforms.

Accountability Mechanisms (A₃):

Existence and functionality of local watchdog institutions, grievance redress mechanisms, and participatory governance structures.

Media and Civil Society Access (A₄):

Ability of regional actors to use media, civil society organizations, and legal systems to raise awareness and demand change.

Autonomy in Key Sectors (A₅):

Level of subnational control over education, environment, land, and resource governance—key arenas in burdened regions.

Each subcomponent is scored on a 0–1 scale, with 1 indicating no access to voice, and 0 indicating full voice and institutional responsiveness. The weighted average across these components forms the region’s MASI-A score.

In political economy, voice is often treated as endogenous to wealth or education. MASI rejects this assumption. It treats voice as structurally conditioned by geography, history, and institutional design.

This allows MASI to capture why some relatively poor regions are stable (because they have voice) and why some more developed regions experience conflict (because voice is denied).

When “A” Interacts with “M”, “S”, and “ΔW”

MASI’s strength lies in its relational architecture. The A variable interacts with other dimensions:

• Where S is high (heavy burden) and A is low, communities are overexposed and unheard.
• Where M is low (trapped populations) and A is low, grievance builds without exit.
• Where ΔW is high (welfare expectations unmet) and A is low, democratic legitimacy collapses.

This interaction helps identify hotspots of democratic breakdown—not where democracy is absent, but where it is insufficient to manage extractive injustice.