Forecasting the onset of genocide and politicide: Annual out-of-sample forecasts on a global dataset, 1988—2003

We present what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first published set of annual out-of-sample forecasts of genocide and politicide based on a global dataset. Our goal is to produce a prototype for a real-time model capable of forecasting one year into the future. Building on the current literatu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of peace research 2013-07, Vol.50 (4), p.437-452
Main Authors: Goldsmith, Benjamin E, Butcher, Charles R, Semenovich, Dimitri, Sowmya, Arcot
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assassinations
Atrocities
Civil wars
Datasets
Forecasting
Forecasting models
Forecasts
Genocide
Knowledge
Model trains
Modeling
Peace research
Policy making
Political instability
Politicide
Politics
Probability forecasts
Risk assessment
Statistical forecasts
Variance
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Summary:We present what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first published set of annual out-of-sample forecasts of genocide and politicide based on a global dataset. Our goal is to produce a prototype for a real-time model capable of forecasting one year into the future. Building on the current literature, we take several important steps forward. We implement an unconditional two-stage model encompassing both instability and genocide, allowing our sample to be the available global data, rather than using conditional case selection or a case-control approach. We explore factors exhibiting considerable variance over time to improve yearly forecasting performance. And we produce annual lists of at-risk states in a format that should be of use to policymakers seeking to prevent such mass atrocities. Our out-of-sample forecasts for 1988—2003 predict 90.9% of genocide onsets correctly while also predicting 79.2% of non-onset years correctly, an improvement over a previous study using a case-control in-sample approach. We produce 16 annual forecasts based only on previous years' data, which identify six of 11 cases of genocide/politicide onset within the top 5% of at-risk countries per year. We believe this represents substantial progress towards useful real-time forecasting of such rare events. We conclude by suggesting ways to further enhance predictive performance.
ISSN:0022-3433
1460-3578
DOI:10.1177/0022343313484167