Can We Predict Armed Conflict? How the First 9 Years of Published Forecasts Stand Up to Reality

Abstract

Abstract Can we predict civil war? This article sheds light on this question by evaluating 9 years of, at the time, future predictions made by Hegre et al. (2013) in 2011. We evaluate the ability of this study to predict observed conflicts in the 2010–2018 period, using multiple metrics. We also evaluate the original performance evaluation, i.e., whether the performance measures presented by Hegre et al. hold in this new 9-year window. Overall, we conclude that Hegre et al. were able to produce meaningful and reasonably accurate predictions of armed conflict. Of course, they did not always hit the mark. We find that the model has performed worse in predicting low level incidence of conflict than in predicting major armed conflict. The model also failed to predict some important broader regional shifts. These, however, represent important insights for future research and illustrate the utility in predictive models for both testing and developing theory.