Predicting Peace and Conflict: Insights from CAS's 'Stability and Change' Project Leaders

On the 26th of October, two of last year’s project leaders at CAS, Nils Lid Hjort and Håvard Hegre, held a lecture at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Stability and Change

Professors Nils Lid Hjort at the University of Oslo (UiO) and Håvard Hegre at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) co-led one of the CAS projects for the academic year of 2022/2023, Stability and Change. This project brought together a dynamic, cross-disciplinary task force of leading international experts, specializing in areas including statistical methodology and peace-and-conflict research.

The session unraveled the complexities and nuances of forecasting armed conflicts. Central to their discourse was the innovative exploration into predicting the fatalities in conflicts, navigating through a labyrinth of uncertainties ranging from input data to model selections. In a world shrouded in unpredictability, the lecture spotlighted the pivotal role of sophisticated models, adroit in handling multifaceted uncertainties, offering a new lens to decipher the intricacies of war and conflict databases. A rich tapestry of discussions also unveiled the measurable factors instrumental in swaying conflict trajectories, alongside a critical evaluation of democracy indexes in their predictive capacities in the volatile landscapes of conflict.

 

Watch the recording from the Academy Meeting below.

 

Published 30 October 2023, 11:40 | Last edited 01 February 2024, 9:30