CIAO DATE: 09/2008

Special Report No. 204: Using Quantitative and Qualitative Models to Forecast Instability

March 2008

United States Institute of Peace

Abstract

• Preventing violent conflict requires early warning of likely crises so that preventive actions can be planned and taken before the onset of mass violence.
• For most of the post–World War II period, policymakers and intelligence agencies have relied on experts to make qualitative judgments regarding the risk of instability or violent changes in their areas of study. Yet the inability of such experts to adequately predict major events has led to efforts to use social and analytical tools to create more “scientific” forecasts of political crises.
• The advent of quantitative forecasting models that give early warning of the onset of political instability offers the prospect of major advances in the accuracy of forecasting over traditional qualitative methods.
• Because certain models have a demonstrated accuracy of over 80 percent in early identification of political crises, some have questioned whether such models should replace traditional qualitative analysis.
• While these quantitative forecasting methods should move to the foreground and play a key role in developing early warning tools, this does not mean that traditional qualitative analysis is dispensable.
• The best results for early warning are most likely obtained by the judicious combination of quantitative analysis based on forecasting models with qualitative analysis that rests on explicit causal relationships and precise forecasts of its own.
• Policymakers and analysts should insist on a multiple-method approach, which has greater forecasting power than either the quantitative or qualitative method alone. In this way, political instability forecasting is likely to make its largest advance over earlier practices.

Resource link: Special Report No. 204: Using Quantitative and Qualitative Models to Forecast Instability [PDF] - 265K