NADIR
In development: A disaggregated data and risk analytics platform tracking subnational divisions, institutional exclusion, and legitimacy deficits as early-warning signals of political instability.
NADIR
Existing political risk tools primarily capture violence as it occurs. In contrast, NADIR systematically identifies the underlying, intra-national divisions that often precede it.
The National Divisions & Risk Observatory (NADIR) is an integrated data and analytics platform designed to measure and aggregate structural risks that conventional monitoring systems often miss. Existing tools aggregate risk at the country level and measure conflicts already underway. NADIR instead focuses on latent underlying divisions (ethnic, territorial, institutional, and attitudinal) that are invisible to national averages and that typically precede instability.
What NADIR measures
NADIR combines three analytical layers in a unified framework:
- Institutional arrangements: constitutionally and legally encoded inclusion and exclusion of social groups, coded at the country, group-, and subnational level
- Public attitudes and legitimacy: harmonized political and social attitudes related to institutional trust, political legitimacy, and grievances, disaggregated by ethnicity, religion, region, and other identity categories
- Movement mobilization: systematic data on nationalist, separatist, and exclusionary political movements, tracking their demands, organizational capacity, and links to institutional structures
The critical feature is disaggregation: rather than reporting how a country looks on average, NADIR uncovers how different societal groups within nations perceive and relate to the political system and the wider community, and how those factors compare across cases.
Who it is for
NADIR aims to serve four broad user groups. Political risk analysts and insurers can use the structural indicators to identify pre-violence risks not yet visible in event data. Security consultancies and crisis planners can use the group-level data to calibrate escalation potential that may be obscured by country-level averages. ESG investors and sustainability teams can use the institutional and legitimacy indicators to assess inclusion deficits and governance fragility. Development agencies and foreign ministries can use the integrated framework to target preventive engagement.
Products
NADIR includes a public-facing dashboard with shareable visualizations of government structure, legitimacy gaps, contested territory, and political fragmentation. A more comprehensive research layer is also available, offering access to the full data infrastructure, custom indicator construction, disaggregated risk projections at country and subnational levels, and regularly updated country reports.
NADIR is currently in development.