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.
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.