Scientific forecasting of social conflict: theoretical approaches and methods

The views of modern conflict theorists concerning the possibility of social conflict forecasting process are analyzed in the article, approaches to this very phenomenon are considered. The main methods of forecasting conflict situations are described, such as extrapolation of a given situation to the future state of the system (inertial analysis method); modeling of a possible conflict situation; static method as well as expert survey. Of interest in the analysis of this problem are also the theory of economic cycles (the theory of long waves) by N.D. Kondratiev, the theory of catastrophes as applied to geology, the activity approach.