Anticipating the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

One way to demonstrate progress in a field of scientific inquiry is to show that factors believed to explain some phenomenon can also be used effectively to predict both its occurrence and its nonoccurrence. This study draws on the state strength literature to identify relevant country macrostructural factors that can contribute to different kinds and levels of intensity of conflict and country instabilities. A pattern classification algorithm—fuzzy analysis of statistical evidence (FASE)—is used to analyze the relationships between country macrostructural factors and historical instances of country instability. A split-sample validation design is used to evaluate the ability of FASE to generate competent predictions, using the standard forecasting performance metrics overall accuracy, recall, and precision. The results demonstrate the potential for FASE to accurately forecast not just the occurrence but also the level of intensity of country-specific instabilities out 5 years with about 80% overall accuracy.

[1]  Joseph Lepgold.  Is Anyone Listening? International Relations Theory and the Problem of Policy Relevance , 1998 .

[2]  M. Seligson,et al.  Inequality and Insurgency , 1987, American Political Science Review.

[3]  Philip A. Schrodt,et al.  Empirical Indicators of Crisis Phase in the Middle East, 1979-1995 , 1997 .

[4]  Patrick M. Regan,et al.  Choosing to Intervene: Outside Interventions in Internal Conflicts , 1998, The Journal of Politics.

[5]  Yuan Yan Chen,et al.  Statistical inference based on the possibility and belief measures , 1995 .

[6]  John A. Vasquez.  The War Puzzle: PRELIMINARIES , 1993 .

[7]  Philip A. Schrodt.  Early Warning of Conflict in Southern Lebanon using Hidden Markov Models , 1997 .

[8]  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita,et al.  Red Flag Over Hong Kong , 1996 .

[9]  David Carment,et al.  The International Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict: Concepts, Indicators, and Theory , 1993 .

[10]  John A. Vasquez.  What do we know about war , 2000 .

[11]  A. Enterline,et al.  Time Remembered: A Dynamic Model of Interstate Interaction , 2001 .

[12]  Jerrold M. Post,et al.  Worlds in collision, worlds in collusion: The uneasy relationship between the counterterrorism policy community and the academic community∗ , 1988 .

[13]  S. Bremer.  Dangerous Dyads , 1992 .

[14]  Peter Wallensteen,et al.  Armed Conflict, 1989-98 , 1999 .

[15]  John W. Maxwell,et al.  Resource Scarcity and Conflict in Developing Countries , 2000 .

[16]  T. Skocpol,et al.  States and Social Revolutions , 1979 .

[17]  T. Gurr.  War, Revolution, and the Growth of the Coercive State , 1988 .

[18]  K. Holsti,et al.  The state, war, and the state of war: Frontmatter , 1996 .

[19]  Kurt Schock.  A Conjunctural Model of Political Conflict , 1996 .

[20]  T. Homer-Dixon.  Environment, Scarcity, and Violence , 2010 .

[21]  W. J. Dixon,et al.  Marx's theory of rebellion: a cross-national analysis of class exploitation, economic development, and violent revolt , 1993 .

[22]  T. Vanhanen,et al.  Domestic Ethnic Conflict and Ethnic Nepotism: A Comparative Analysis , 1999 .

[23]  Peter Brecke.  Finding Harbingers of Violent Conflict: Using Pattern Recognition to Anticipate Conflicts , 1998 .

[24]  J. O'neal,et al.  The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950–1985 , 1997 .

[25]  Gary King,et al.  Improving Forecasts of State Failure , 2001 .

[26]  Didier Dubois,et al.  Possibility Theory - An Approach to Computerized Processing of Uncertainty , 1988 .

[27]  J. Wilkenfeld,et al.  A Study of Crisis , 1997 .

[28]  J. Jenkins,et al.  Mapping Mass Political Conflict and Civil Society , 1997 .

[29]  G. Blainey.  Causes of War , 1973 .

[30]  K. Holsti.  The state, war, and the state of war: The creation of states since 1945 , 1996 .

[31]  J. Davies,et al.  Preventive measures : building risk assessment and crisis early warning systems , 1998 .

[32]  Bruce Russett,et al.  Assessing the Liberal Peace with Alternative Specifications: Trade Still Reduces Conflict , 1999 .

[33]  E. Reinhardt,et al.  Domestic Strife and the Initiation of Violence at Home and Abroad , 1999 .

[34]  B. B. D. Mesquita.  The End of the Cold War: Predicting an Emergent Property , 1998 .

[35]  Tanja Ellingsen,et al.  Beyond Environmental Scarcity: Causal Pathways to Conflict , 1998 .

[36]  Yuan Yan Chen,et al.  Fuzzy analysis of statistical evidence , 2000, IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Syst..

[37]  S. Blomberg,et al.  The Temporal Links between Conflict and Economic Activity , 2002 .

[38]  Jon C. W. Pevehouse,et al.  Serbian Compliance or Defiance in Kosovo? , 1999 .

[39]  W. Moore,et al.  Ethnopolitical Rebellion: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the 1980s with Risk Assessments for the 1990s , 1997 .

[40]  Frank R. Pfetsch,et al.  KOSIMO: A Databank on Political Conflict , 2000 .

[41]  T. Skocpol,et al.  States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China , 1979 .

[42]  Tanja Ellingsen,et al.  Colorful Community or Ethnic Witches' Brew? , 2000 .

[43]  T. Gurr,et al.  Why Men Rebel. , 1970 .

[44]  N. Choucri,et al.  Threats to Sustainability: Simulating Con ict Within and Between Nations , 1998 .

[45]  Kumar Rupesinghe,et al.  Early Warning and Conflict Resolution , 1992 .

[46]  J. Jenkins,et al.  Conflict-Carrying Capacity, Political Crisis, and Reconstruction , 2001 .