ABSTRACT
The Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger is a ranking of 163 countries based on their estimated risk of experiencing major bouts of political instability or armed conflict in the three-year period 2010–2012. The estimates are obtained from a statistical forecasting model that uses 2009 data for several variables that correlate strongly with the onset of political instability or armed conflict. The Ledger represents a synthesis of some of the leading research on explaining and forecasting state instability. To ease interpretation of the results, the ledger presents each country's likelihood of future instability as a risk ratio. The risk ratio gives the relative risk of instability in a country compared to the average estimated. It appearing in the ledger are statistical estimates and, accordingly, are accompanied by varying levels of confidence, depending on the particular attributes of a given country.
