Forecasting European Union Politics: Real-time Forecasts in Political Time Series Analysis
Journal
European Union Politics
ISSN
1465-1165
ISSN-Digital
1741-2757
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2010-06
Author(s)
Abstract
Forecasting plays an increasingly important role in the scientific study of European
Union politics and in political science in general. This is because forecasts are not
only indispensable for (political) actors who need to form expectations about future
events, but can also be used to judge the validity of (competing) theoretical models. While the debate about whether political science should engage in forecasting is largely over, many questions about how this should be done in everyday research are still open. One of these is how forecasts of political time series can be derived from theoretical models. Using a practical example from European Union research, we start to address this question. We first show how forecasts of political time series can be derived from both theoretical and atheoretical models. Subsequently, we use an atheoretical time series (ARMA) imputation approach to demonstrate how they can be fruitfully integrated in order to overcome some of the limitations to making forecasts of political time series which are based on theoretical models.
Union politics and in political science in general. This is because forecasts are not
only indispensable for (political) actors who need to form expectations about future
events, but can also be used to judge the validity of (competing) theoretical models. While the debate about whether political science should engage in forecasting is largely over, many questions about how this should be done in everyday research are still open. One of these is how forecasts of political time series can be derived from theoretical models. Using a practical example from European Union research, we start to address this question. We first show how forecasts of political time series can be derived from both theoretical and atheoretical models. Subsequently, we use an atheoretical time series (ARMA) imputation approach to demonstrate how they can be fruitfully integrated in order to overcome some of the limitations to making forecasts of political time series which are based on theoretical models.
Language
English
Keywords
European union
legislation
forecasting
predictions
policy
time series
theoretical models
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Sage Publishing
Publisher place
London UK
Volume
11
Number
2
Start page
309
End page
327
Pages
19
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
222410
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
Bechtel 2010_EU time series.pdf
Size
239.69 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
93a5192d55b9e0ebd2fe74fc99228d69