Using Quantitative and Qualitative Models to Forecast Instability
Introduction
There is a strong tendency in both government and private enterprise to seek out the “best” method of doing a task and then rely on that method. In manufacturing or policy design, this approach makes agreat deal of sense why use a mix of best and second best methods if one approach has been demonstrated to be clearly superior? In forecasting violent conflict, the traditional method has been to rely on expert analysis of individual countries or regions, drawing on the knowledge of policy professionals and academics who have worked on the country or region in question for a substantial period of time. Such qualitative analysis generally rests on the expert’s subjective analysis of a mix of sources, including news reportage and other media sources, other open-source data, and embassy and intelligence reports. Recently, however, a number of quantitative models, based on objective analysis of open-source data, have been offered to analysts as a supplement to their traditional analysis. Notable examples are the...