Is war declining, as recently postulated by Steven Pinker, Azar Gat, and Joshua Goldstein? This page and its subpages present our predictions of the future of war and armed conflict.
Our most recent forecasts were just published in Environmental Research Letters.
The figure below summarizes our earlier forecast. It shows the predicted proportion of countries in the world in minor or major armed conflict (upper line) as well as major conflict (lower line), based on data up to 2009. The pages in the menu below describe the data and methodology underlying this forecast, and discuss how it can be explained. We also refer to other projects looking at this question.
Contents: Conflict forecasts: Global – Regional – Country-level | Explanations | Methodology | How well do we predict? – Observed vs. predicted conflict, 2007-2009 – Observed vs. predicted conflict, 2012 | Other forecasting projects | Our earlier forecasts | Affiliated researchers | Publications
Financing
The project has been financed by the Norwegian Research Council, NFR 163115/V10, project ‘Political Institutions, Development, and a Domestic Civil Peace’, and by Håvard Mokleiv Nygård’s doctoral fellowship.
Cooperation
The project is a partnership between the University of Oslo; the Centre for the Study of Civil War/the Conditions of Violence and Peace Department at the Peace Research Institute Oslo; the Østfold University College and the Swedish National Defense College.
Håvard Hegre 