With markets often outperforming more traditional forecasting approaches, bookmakers could be useful to policy makers in predicting global trends and events.

The recent ‘Arab Spring’ and the subsequent realignment of much of the political sphere of the Middle East took many traditional commentators by surprise. Matthew Partridge argues that, in light of this, the ‘prediction markets’ of political bookmakers may be able to provide a significant contribution to intelligence gathering by adding greater accuracy and objectivity to forecasting.