Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government
Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies,... Read more about Archon Fung
Journal article on: The Future is a Moving Target: Predicting Political Instability
Previous research by Goldstone et al. (2010) generated a highly accurate predictive model of state-level political instability. Notably, this model identifies political institutions – and partial democracy with factionalism, specifically – as the most compelling factors explaining when and where instability events are likely to occur. This article reassesses the model’s explanatory power and makes three related points: (1) the model’s predictive power varies substantially over time; (2) its predictive power peaked in the period used for out-of-sample validation (1995–2004) in the original study and (3) the model performs relatively poorly in the more recent period. The authors find that this decline is not simply due to the Arab Uprisings, instability events that occurred in autocracies. Similar issues are found with attempts to predict nonviolent uprisings (Chenoweth and Ulfelder 2017) and armed conflict onset and continuation (Hegre et al. 2013). These results inform two conclusions: (1) the drivers of instability are not constant over time and (2) care must be exercised in interpreting prediction exercises as evidence in favor or dispositive of theoretical mechanisms.
The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is excited to announce its 2019 Speaker Series: Human Rights in Hard Places, facilitated by Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer, Douglas A. Johnson.
The Human Rights in Hard Places Speaker Series was formed to underscore that despite the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, vast human rights abuses are still occurring 7 decades later.
Director, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Chairman, Brigham and Women's Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine Lavine Family Professor of Humanitarian Studies, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard Medical School Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Phuong Pham, Ph.D., MPH, is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of Evaluation and... Read more about Phuong Pham
Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Nien-hê Hsieh is an associate professor of business administration in the General Management Unit. His research concerns ethical issues in business and the... Read more about Nien-hê Hsieh
Professor of Government, Harvard University Chair, Committee on Degrees in Social Studies
Eric Beerbohm is Professor of Government at Harvard University. His philosophical and teaching interests include democratic theory, theories of... Read more about Eric Beerbohm
