Armenia Ranked 24th in Likelihood of Civil Unrest by 2014: US Model

The forecast for predicting the next political hotspots could be much more accurate because of a model developed by two Kansas State University professors and a colleague in New York, reports Newsroom America.

The model, named the Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism Model of Domestic Political Violence Forecast, is currently five for five in predicting which countries will likely experience an escalation in domestic political violence against their governments within the next five years.

“So far it’s been pretty accurate,” said Sam Bell, assistant professor of political science at K-State. Bell created the forecast model with Amanda Murdie, K-State assistant professor of political science, and David Cingranelli, professor of political science at Binghamton University, Binghamton, N.Y. It was developed for Milcord, an Open Innovation company that builds knowledge management solutions for federal agencies.

To date the model has successfully predicted civil unrest in Peru, Ireland, Ecuador, Italy and most recently, Tunisia. Iran is currently at the top of the list.

“What’s interesting is that while our model predicts violence in countries like Honduras and Iran, it’s also predicting it in western democracies,” Murdie said. “For example, our model predicted violence in Ireland. That happened recently due to the International Monetary Fund bailout.”

To create the forecast model, the researchers built a database using publicly available information on 150 countries. It contains the frequency and intensity of domestic political violence from 1990-2009. According to Bell, this violence includes anything from a sit-in that turns into a physical altercation to an embassy bombing.

In order to forecast domestic political violence, three concepts are accounted for: coercion, coordination and capacity.

Coercion is defined by violations of physical rights. This heightens the motivation of protestors, according to Murdie.

“I think that was one of the biggest findings from our model: that adhering to basic human rights limits the political violence,” she said. “In covering all these countries and in looking at this passage of time, we find that human rights crackdowns still hurt a country the most, even to this day.

The second concept, coordination, is how easily a domestic group can mobilize.

Capacity, the third factor, is the ability of a country to project itself throughout its territory, thus limiting the intensity of domestic violence against government.

A list of the top 37 countries projected to experience civil unrest between now and 2014 is as follows:

1. Iran 2. Sri Lanka 3. Russia 4. Georgia 5. Israel 6. Turkey 7. Burundi 8. Chad 9. Honduras 10. Czech Republic 11. China 12. Italy 13. Colombia 14. Ukraine 15. Indonesia 16. Malaysia 17. Jordan 18. Mexico 19. Kenya 20. South Africa 21. Ireland 22. Peru 23. Chile 24. Armenia 25. Tunisia 26. Democratic Republic of the Congo 27. Belarus 28. Argentina 29. Albania 30. Ecuador 31. Sudan 32. Austria 33. Nigeria 34. Syria 35. Kyrgyz Republic 36. Egypt 37. Belgium