For academic scholars of international relations like myself, our theories and models can get rather abstract and disconnected from the lives of people affected by the events and processes we study (especially war and peace). If we better understood war and political violence, we might be able to predict outbreaks and ultimately allow preventive interventions to save lives -- as epidemiologists might treat outbreaks of contagious diseases. A number of people are working in this "early warning" area in international relations.
To encourage this approach, I am organizing a contest to predict -- yes, about the future! -- the worldwide fatalities next month (June 2002) from war and civil conflict as reported in the (all-bow-down) New York Times. The NYT has its limitations of course, but it's widely available and its biases are fairly predictable; for some conflicts it will report nearly 100% of fatalities; for others it will miss most of them. I will count reported fatalities from any political violence involving armed groups on both sides -- for example, yes on civil wars, assassinations, and terrorism, but no on state executions or U.S. street gangs. The deaths must be directly inflicted (by some kind of weapon), though they need not be intentional. (Once you start counting indirect death like sick people who couldn't get to the hospital because of political violence, or people who are malnourished in a war zone, it gets very problematical to make a count - not to say it's unimportant.) The fatalities must be reported as part of some event and not just a background level (like, "4000 people are thought to have died this year" but we don't know when or where). The deaths must occur in June and must be reported in the NYT between June 2 and July 1, 2002.
This is just a little ad hoc experiment, which might help develop a more extensive project on international predictions. I welcome everyone's participation -- spread the word. I will be the referee and not participate. In the long run, I'm curious whether number-crunchers, theorists, comparativists, or policy analysts have the best short-term predictive abilities. I also hope to draw attention to the hopeful fact that worldwide deaths from war are currently at a historic low level (granted, one is too many!). We scholars do not agree though on whether this is a short-term lull or lasting trend.
To enter, send an email message with your name/position (or include in signature line), a sentence describing your reasoning if you like, and a single number representing your prediction of reported war deaths worldwide in June 2002. Send to:
prediction@joshuagoldstein.com
on or before Sunday May 26, 2002.
The winner will receive a free autographed copy of the new full-color edition of my IR textbook with companion Microsoft Atlas CD-ROM, in lieu of a real prize. The real prize comes when we scholars contribute to reducing the number!
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Joshua S. Goldstein, Professor of International Relations
American University, Washington, DC 20016-8071
To Joshua S. Goldstein's home page
To "The Worldwide Lull in War" [Op Ed] (CS Monitor 5/14/02: 9)