Forecasting

We cannot eliminate the root causes of political violence without policies based on evidence and attention to long-term consequences. To this end, OEF Research develops and promotes innovative quantitative tools to infer the causes of political events, predict them in advance, and evaluate how decisions made in the short-term are likely to affect peace and governance in the future. CoupCast is OEF Research's flagship forecasting model, which uses historical data and machine learning to predict the likelihood of a coup attempt occurring in any country on a month to month basis.

Ballots counted in Haiti

May 23, 2017 / in Forecasting, CoupCast

Will 2017 End Without a Single Coup Attempt?

March 16, 2017 / in Forecasting, CoupCast

Curtis Bell Presents Forecasting Research at the United Nations

Somali Elections

March 01, 2017 / in Forecasting, REIGN DATASET: International Elections and Leaders, Political Conflict

International Elections and Leaders: March 2017 Update

Forecasting election conflict at the State Department

February 22, 2017 / in Forecasting, CoupCast

OEF Forecasters Present at the U.S. State Department

Newly Elected President Adama Barrow Returns to Gambia - Photo by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

February 01, 2017 / in Forecasting, REIGN DATASET: International Elections and Leaders, Political Institutions, Political Conflict

REIGN Dataset: February 2017 Updates

Arid soils in the Sahel - Photo by Pablo Tosco/Oxfam, Flicker, Creative Commons

January 13, 2017 / in Forecasting, Political Institutions, CoupCast

Global Coup Risk Drops Slightly in January 2017

Why Women Losing Elections

January 06, 2017 / in Forecasting, REIGN DATASET: International Elections and Leaders, Gender & Security, Political Institutions

The Data Behind the Decline in Female Heads of Government

Coup Forecast Updates January 2017

January 03, 2017 / in Forecasting, REIGN DATASET: International Elections and Leaders, Political Institutions, Political Conflict

REIGN Dataset: January 2017 Updates

Michel Aoun returns to Lebanon

November 29, 2016 / in Forecasting, REIGN DATASET: International Elections and Leaders, Political Institutions

REIGN Dataset: December 2016 Updates

Myanmar Democracy

November 11, 2016 / in Forecasting, Political Institutions, CoupCast

Could Greed Derail Myanmar’s Democratic Transition?

Improving Election Prediction Internationally

Ryan Kennedy, David Lazer, Stefan Wojcik Written by Ryan Kennedy, David Lazer, Stefan Wojcik on February 3, 2017

Assumptions underlying election result predictions have been encountering wide criticism.

Read more

foreign policy analysis

Conditional Relationships Between Drought and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

Written by Curtis Bell, Patrick W. Keys on August 15, 2016

Few cross-national studies provide evidence of a relationship between environmental scarcity and conflict, although much of the literature claims that destabilizing effects of environmental crises can be mitigated by the right sociopolitical

Read more

Democracy and Coup d’État

Coup d’État and Democracy

Written by Curtis Bell on February 19, 2016

This article explains coup activity in democracies by adapting insights from the literature on commitment problems and framing coup around the threats leaders and potential coup plotters pose to each other.

Read more