Abstract:Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism

From MilcordWiki

• Caglayan, A., Burke, D., Eaton, G., Qamar, S., Caglayan, J., and Cingranelli, D., Regan, P., Bell, S., Frank, R. (2009) Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism (PSIR),

AFRL/RIEA Final Report, Rome, NY, January, 2009.

Although a number of political governance and human rights indicators have been developed over the years, there are no analytical models that map these societal indicators to future radicalization. In this project, we researched and developed an analytical software tool, PSIR (Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism) that predicts future radicalization based on current and historical societal indicators. For the societal indicators, we evaluated scored political governance indicators (e.g. CIRI Human Rights Data Project) collected in comparative political science research along with economic, grievances and essential service indicators. For the radicalization metrics, we used Global Terrorism Database incident and Upssala Conflict Data Project statistics. We used the COIN and the recently released Stability Operations Field Manuals as a process model.

We developed models that find the causal relationships between the societal indicators and radicalism metrics, and the parameters that define quantitatively the dependency among these indicators. Our results show that there are a number of key variables in global human rights, governance, grievances, economic datasets that are causally related to low intensity conflicts. Our tool can be used for strategic planning for countries at a given unified command, and more effective CERP/PRT budget and resource allocation decisions in a single country.