Guest lecture by prof. Sam Bell - Montesquieu Institute

On Wednesday November 23, 2011, prof. Sam Bell, assistant professor at the Kansas State University, gave a guest lecture at the Montesquieu Institute about political hotspots. Prof. Sam Bell presented an international comparative model that predicts the chance of political violence.

The podcast and newspaper article are only available in Dutch.

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Repression does not work! This was one of the conclusions of Kansas State University professor Sam Bell in his presentation entitled `Coercion, Capacity and Coordination: A risk assessment model of the determinants of political violence´ on November 23rd at the Montesquieu Institute. Together with three co-authors Sam Bell has been working on a new model to predict societal unrest in any country of the world.

Sam Bell's presentation

'Predicting political hotspots: A risk assessment model of political violence'

As Europe tackles its economic and financial troubles, the question of how such a moment of weakness affects the ability of European governments to curb domestic unrest and political discontent, gains much prominence. With Greece experiencing violent protests, following the adoption of another austerity package to secure further loans from the IMF and the EU, where is the most likely political hotspot going to be? Even further, is it possible to systematically predict the eruption of domestic violence against governments with a reasonable amount of accuracy?

Montesquieu Institute invited Sam Bell, assistant professor at Kansas State University, to present a global, comparative model that predicts the likelihood of domestic violence against the state. The model uses an extensive database of a wide range of past indicators of domestic violence to predict future political violence. The model has been praised for its accuracy by predicting violence in countries, such as Iran or Honduras, but also predicting political violence in Western Europe in Greece, and Ireland. Furthermore, it is also one of the most comprehensive models of this sort. The model uses a risk assessment method developed by Gurr and Moore (1997) and applies O'Brien's (2002) risk assessment metric. By estimating accurate in-sample "predictions" of political violence, it uses them to make out-of-sample predictions to identify the countries where political violence is likely to increase in the next five years.

The model builds on theoretical concepts of capacity, coercion and coordination. Dr. Bell developed this model with Amanda Murdie, assistant professor at Kansas State University, and David Cingranelli, professor at Binghamton University. The model supports the intuition that lower levels of political violence occur in high capacity states and in those countries that generally refrain from the regular use of coercion against their citizens. However, higher levels of political violence are also likely to occur when governments respect the citizens' right to freedom of assembly and association, made communication technology available, and allowed foreign aid to civil society groups.