The existing literature identifies several factors that may influence conflict and cooperation in international river basins. It offers theoretical arguments to that end, and it empirically tests these arguments by means of qualitative case studies and large-N statistical work.1 Empirical testing in this research is primarily of an ex-post nature, however. That is, it seeks to account for incidences or levels of international river basin conflict and cooperation observed in the past.
In this paper, we seek to take research one step further by moving from ex-post empirical analysis to predictions and forecasts. Predictions are “conditional statements about a phenomenon for which the researcher actually has data, i.e., the outcome variable has been observed.”2 A forecast “is a conditional statement about how a phenomenon will develop in the future and/or whose values are truly unknown.”3 Our motivation is substantive and practical, but also methodological. As it...