Posts tagged political forecasting
Threat Monitor Addendum: The details of the US-China soft power monitor
Threat Monitor Addendum: The details of the US-China soft power monitor

In Parts 1, 2, and 3, we discuss the utility of a threat monitor to tracking issues that are of low probability but high impact. We used the example of China overtaking the United States in soft power. In this section we’ll get into why each factor was chosen to illustrate some of the decisions that can go into the construction of one such monitor.

There is one question that you might have about forecasting. How do we know if we’re right?

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Chris Oatespolitical risk metrics, political forecasting
Threat Monitor Part 2: Looking over the horizon
Threat Monitor Part 2: Looking over the horizon

Threat monitors are a great way at tracking what’s happening in the present. They can also be great at seeing into the immediate future. The monitors described in Part 1 are very well suited to looking into the next 12 months and seeing what might happen.

So what do you do when you want to look further? If you’re concerned with longer-term investments, say, out to five years, how can a threat monitor work?

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Chris Oatespolitical risk metrics, political forecasting
Threat Monitors Part 1: How to sense the rising waters
Threat Monitors Part 1: How to sense the rising waters

How can you track the untrackable?

That’s a question that affects not only political risk, but anyone in business or politics who has to deal with low probability, high impact risks. Often these exist in such a morass of qualitative information and reports written entirely in the subjunctive that knowing whether the risk has grown or shrunk recently is difficult to impossible.

Yet we still need to know how threatening these risks are and what direction they’re heading in. Just because they’re currently over the horizon doesn’t mean we should take our eye off them.

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Chris Oatespolitical risk metrics, political forecasting
Five reasons to use a Matrix Game in political risk planning

According to an EY survey of the global business environment, 2019 saw a post-WWII high in political risk. Then COVID-19 hit.

It is not hyperbole to say that this is perhaps the most uncertain time in the global economy and geopolitics in at least 30 years. Countries are in lockdown. International cooperation has broken down. And economies are witnessing Great Depression levels of unemployment.

The necessity of planning for the future has never been more important, but that future has never been more uncertain.

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Chris Oatesmatrix game, wargame, political forecasting