Abstract: Whether their responsibilities cover foreign assistance, diplomacy or defense, policymakers and their staffs regularly seek out realistic assessments of future trends in states and regions upon which they focus. In 2006, as part of its Global Trends publications effort, analysts at the US National Intelligence Council began to explore the possibility of producing ‘timed statistical forecasts’ by coupling theories from age-structural political demography with the UN Population Division’s demographic projections. The effort has produced easily-communicated graphical models that can be regenerated and tested, and forecasts that have regularly out-performed conventional analyses by country and regional experts. Although limited in scope, these simple demographic models provide fresh insights into the expected timing of the rise of specific political, social, and economic indicators (including liberal democracy; civil conflict; and discrete levels of per-capita income, educational attainment, and child survival) among modern states—some of which disagree with conventional wisdom.
The lecture summarizes the methods and findings of the recent Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (2017) article entitled “The Age-structural Theory of State Behavior“.
Speaker: Richard Cincotta
Date: Nov. 22, 2017, Time: 18:30-20h
Venue: University of Duisburg-Essen, Room LS 105, Lotharstr. 53, 47057 Duisburg