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Geopolitical Analysis

How can data clarify shifts in power, influence, and geopolitical risk?

Geopolitical change is shaped by relationships among countries, institutions, economies, security systems, and people.
Pardee’s geopolitical analysis team helps multilateral institutions, governments, and think tanks study those relationships through data, tools, and scenario-based analysis.

We examine how diplomacy, conflict, national power, and influence evolve over time and shape the international system. By bringing together historical context, original datasets, bilateral modeling, and transparent assumptions, our work helps users compare how diplomatic ties, conflict risk, power, and influence may change under different conditions.
We build and maintain original datasets that support academic inquiry and help policy communities compare assumptions, relationships, and geopolitical risks.

Diplometrics datasets

Data that makes geopolitical relationships measurable.
One foundation of this work is Diplometrics, Pardee’s effort to measure international relationships that are often discussed qualitatively but difficult to compare systematically.

Through Diplometrics, Pardee gathers data, builds tools, and conducts analysis to measure relationships in the international system. The program identifies international interactions that measure the depth and breadth of political, diplomatic, economic, security, and cultural ties between countries.

These datasets help researchers, policymakers, journalists, students, and practitioners examine diplomacy, influence, cooperation, security, and risk across countries and over time. Some Diplometrics work connects to International Futures (IFs) and bilateral modeling, while other datasets and tools stand alone as open resources for geopolitical research and policy analysis. 

Explore Diplometrics datasets

Once relationships are measured, they can be tested, questioned, and applied. That is where Pardee’s geopolitical work connects scholarship, policy analysis, and student research.

Where scholarship and policy questions meet

Geopolitical analysis depends on careful measurement. Pardee’s work connects original data development, peer-reviewed research, and policy-facing analysis so users can study international relationships with greater structure and transparency.

Our datasets and models are built for more than one audience. Researchers use them to study diplomacy, influence, conflict, cooperation, and international alignment. Policy communities use them to examine strategic relationships, compare assumptions, and interpret risks across time. Students contribute by gathering, coding, cleaning, and analyzing data, building practical skills while strengthening open research resources.

This relationship between scholarship and policy use strengthens the work. Academic research tests concepts, methods, and evidence. Policy engagement surfaces questions that require clearer data, better tools, and more usable analysis. Together, they help make difficult geopolitical dynamics more legible.

Examples of this intersecting work include:
"Understanding future trends is ever more critical. IFs was essential to the National Intelligence Council's recent Global Trends 2030 work. The Pardee Center itself is a national treasure. The expertise there cannot be found anywhere else. IFs is the only model out there which is so comprehensive, mapping potential trajectories, for example, in education, health, and poverty at the individual, national, regional, and global levels. It is proving to be a critical tool for government planners everywhere - in the U.S. and internationally."
Mathew Burrows
Former Counselor and Director, Analysis and Production Staff, National Intelligence Council (NIC)

How Pardee studies geopolitical relationships

The connection between scholarship and use depends on a shared analytical foundation: original data, open tools, and models that make assumptions explicit.

Pardee’s geopolitical analysis is built on a combination of original datasets, open tools, and scenario-based modeling. Diplometrics datasets help make international relationships measurable. International Futures (IFs) adds a way to study how those relationships may evolve alongside changes in development, economics, demography, governance, trade, aid, diplomacy, and geopolitical influence.

Diplometrics helps describe observed relationships among countries. IFs helps users examine how some of those relationships may change under different assumptions. IFs includes bilateral modeling that simulates country-to-country relationships across more than 35,000 country pairs annually in areas such as trade, aid, diplomacy, and geopolitical influence. This structure connects country-level development with country-pair relationships, allowing Pardee to incorporate network characteristics into its modeling framework. This matters because shifts in one country’s development, alliances, or capacity can affect not only that country’s outlook but also its relationships across the international system.
Diplometrics resources help users study diplomacy, leader travel, voting alignment, atrocity risk, power, and influence.
IFs-based bilateral modeling helps users compare how country-to-country relationships may evolve under different assumptions.
Open data, documented methods, and scenario-based tools help users examine uncertainty rather than hide it.

The latest

Pardee’s geopolitical analysis appears in peer-reviewed publications, public-facing analysis, policy reports, interactive tools, and open data repositories. Recent work includes research on diplomatic representation, leader travel, perceived mass atrocities, national power and influence, and scenario-based forecasts of geopolitical futures.
For those facing questions about geopolitical relationships, influence, risk, or plausible pathways, Pardee can help translate broad concerns into measurable assumptions, comparable evidence, and scenario-based analysis.

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How IFs supports geopolitical analysis

Bilateral modeling for geopolitical analysis is powered by International Futures (IFs), our open-source integrated modeling platform.

IFs helps users examine how change in one domain can shape outcomes in others over time. It brings together historical data, model structure, and scenario assumptions across climate, economics, governance, energy, infrastructure, and human well-being. Its value lies not in predicting a single future, but in supporting transparent, long-term analysis of plausible pathways.

IFs includes:
  • 5,000+ historical series
  • Interconnected, macro-level variables
  • Across human, social, and natural systems
  • 188 countries in one-year time steps
  • From 2022 through 2100 and beyond

Help support a global community working toward a more knowable future

Pardee’s open tools, research, and training resources support students, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners around the world. Your gift helps keep that work accessible and strengthens the public research infrastructure behind it.

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