The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future

1. For a not-too-technical explanation of what goes on inside the model, see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Predicting Politics (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002).

2. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Multilateral Negotiations: A Spatial Analysis of the Arab-Israeli Dispute,” International Organization (Summer 1990): 317-40.

3. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1763912.stm.

4. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Israel-Palestinian War: Escalating to Nowhere (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005): 219.

Chapter 6: Engineering the Future

1. For an early, foundational study applying war-of-attrition games, see John Maynard Smith and Geoffrey A. Parker, “The Logic of Asymmetric Contests,” Animal Behaviour 24 (1976): 159-75. See also Anatol Rapaport, Two Person Game Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966).

2. See, for instance, James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49 (1995): 379-414.

Chapter 7: Fast-Forward the Present

1. For a deeper exploration of some surprising implications of commitment problems and the pursuit of peace with adversaries, in particular peace with terrorists, see Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, “Conciliation, Counter-Terrorism, and Patterns of Terrorist Violence,” International Organization 59, no. 1 (2005): 145- 76.

2. The actual calculation predicting the impact of deaths (the horizontal axis) on tourism (the vertical axis) is based on the logarithm of deaths to capture order-of-magnitude changes. Doubling the lives lost from 10 deaths to 20, for instance, represents a more noticeable change than going from 190 to 200 deaths even though the absolute change is the same. Logarithms capture the magnitude of change so that equal spaces reflect equal percentage increments in lost lives.

3. Limitations on the availability of data constrain the number of years I can cover. Violence and tourism are both measured quarterly. The Palestinians suffer the lion’s share of violent deaths. The graph looks very much the same if only Palestinian deaths are plotted rather than all violent deaths resulting from the conflict. Data on Israeli tourism are from the Bank of Israel and can be found at http://www.bankisrael.gov.il/series/en/catalog/tourism/tourist entries/. Data on violent deaths are from David Fielding, “How Does Violent Conflict Affect Investment Location Decisions?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 4 (2004): 465-84.

4. See “Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Press Release for the Hotel Survey, Fourth Quarter 2005,” found at www.pcbs.pna.org/Portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/HOTEL0405.pdf.

Chapter 8: How to Predict the Unpredictable

1. See John Lewis Gaddis, “International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War,” International Security 17, no. 3 (Winter 1992): 323-73; and James Ray and Bruce Russett, “The Future as Arbiter of Theoretical Controversies: Predictions, Explanations and the End of the Cold War,” British Journal of Political Science 26, no. 4 (October 1996): 441-70.

2. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Measuring Systemic Polarity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution (June 1975): 187-215; and Michael F. Altfeld and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Choosing Sides in Wars,” International Studies Quarterly (March 1979): 87-112.

3. EUGene’s data can be accessed at http://www.eugenesoftware.org/.

4. See Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “The End of the Cold War: Predicting an Emergent Property,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 2 (April 1998): 131-55.

Chapter 9: Fun with the Past

1. See Xenophon, Hellenica, Book VI, Chapter IV, downloaded from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/371leuctra.html).

2. Edward Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom—and Revenge (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

3. Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

Chapter 10: Dare to Be Embarrassed!

1. See my TED talk at http://ow.ly/2gFz for my predictions about Iran’s nuclear program.

2. The Algiers Accord, signed in 1975, was supposed to have resolved Iraq-Iran border disputes, such as over control of the Shatt al-Arab River near Basra where the river defines the boundary between Iran and Iraq. Despite the agreement, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Iran six years later, beginning a war that lasted for eight years. The border area remains a source of conflict while the Algiers Accord provides the legally—but not strategically— binding terms for delineating the boundaries of Iran and Iraq. As we know, promises are not the same as commitments, and nothing could be truer in the history of relations between Iran and Iraq.

3. A related analysis indicates that Tehran’s mayor, Ghalibaf is gaining in power. The next Iranian presidential election, though looking very close in my analyses, seems to give a small edge to Ahmadinejad. His power decline is more substantial after the election than before.

4. The patterns of political change shown here arise as well in analysis I did using completely different data on Iran. That gives me considerable confidence that they accurately reflect changing influence in Iran. For a portion of those other analyses see my TED talk at http://ow.ly/2gFz.

Chapter 11: The Big Sweep

1. The text of Lateran II can be found at www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran2.html.

2. Raoule Van Caenegem, The Birth of the English Common Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 64.

3. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine (New York: Doubleday, 1971).

4. George W. Downs, David M. Rocke, and Peter Barsoom, “Is the Good News About Compliance Good News for Cooperation,” International Organization 50 (1996): 379-406.