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Rose McDermott Predictive Model [Editor's Note: Originally prepared for the second edition of Principles of International Politics] There is an exercise that I use in teaching Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's predictive model, which has been very successful at generating student engagement and insight. I adapted this exercise from one that Bruce used in a course I took from him, and I find it to be particularly effective in groups of forty students or less. When I am trying to demonstrate how the model works, and which factors contribute to its predictive accuracy, I ask students if there is a current conflict or problem in international relations that they would like to be able to predict. Usually there are several, but students converge on one. I have used the outcome of the peace talks in Northern Ireland quite successfully a number of times when the issue was central in the news, but any topic will work as long as students know enough about the central players and basic issues at stake. Current American conflicts with Iraq or North Korea would present ideal examples as well. More complex issues related to the conflict in the Middle East or the war on terrorism can be used, too, although the exercise works best when the central prediction is clear and limited in scope. I then write the central variables--players, positions, power, and salience--on the board, and ask students to name the central players. Usually they can generate a few of the key ones, but I often must add more obscure players. Once the players are listed, I draw a continuum on the board, write in the extreme positions on each side, and then ask students to place the players along it. For example, in the case of Northern Ireland, one extreme says "unity with the Irish Republic" and the other says "unity with England." As students make suggestions about where certain players should be placed, I challenge those placements that I do not believe are accurate, asking students to justify their decisions. Often other students will do the same. Students are then asked to assess the power of the relevant players on a scale of 1-100. I remind them that the entire scale should add up to 100. This part of the exercise helps students see that their first impressions are not always lasting ones. Often they start with extreme guesses about the power of particular actors--giving the United States 100, for example--and then are left not knowing what to do with the other players. In this section, I let students start with whatever extreme values they generate. Upon realizing that the distributions do not add up, they see the inherent errors in their early assessments. I am careful to question them on balancing their judgments as well, so that if they say the United States has 60 and England has 30 and the Irish Republic has 10, then they are arguing that the United States can impose its will on both England and Ireland. I ask students if they think this is right, and further reassessments take place as they begin to realize that power is highly relative in these contexts. Finally, I ask students to assess the salience of the various actors. They must judge how important the particular issue is to each player relative to the other important issues that the actor confronts. In this way, students see that while power is assessed relative to other actors, salience is judged within the domestic political context of each state. Again, students often find themselves changing their assessments as they begin to consider the other important issues facing each player. Some players will always be very high because they are single-issue actors, but others will be confronted with many other concerns besides the conflict at hand. Since I tend not to teach this topic in a highly mathematical way (because I am teaching introductory students), I use logic and rhetoric at this point to discuss the way that these factors combine, and not a formal model. However, this could certainly be done with higher-level students.
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