I have received several National Science Foundation grants for my work cleaning and extending the Militarized Interstate Dispute dataset, 1816-2010. This page describes the data I have produced thus far as well as my current funded projects.
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA'S ISSR WORKSHOP ON INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
Here is the schedule and papers for the March 14th, 2020, Workshop on International Conflict.
CORRECTED MID DATA
Our review of the original MID dataset found an exceptionally high error rate for individual cases in the data. Our suggestions for cleaning the data include:
ROBUSTNESS CHECKS FOR HETEROGENEITY IN THE MID DATA
MID NARRATIVES
MILITARIZED CONFRONTATION DATA (MID incidents)
FORMAL SETTLEMENT DATA
CURRENT PROJECTS
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA'S ISSR WORKSHOP ON INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT
Here is the schedule and papers for the March 14th, 2020, Workshop on International Conflict.
CORRECTED MID DATA
Our review of the original MID dataset found an exceptionally high error rate for individual cases in the data. Our suggestions for cleaning the data include:
- A list of all MIDs that our group could not find, with explanations, is described here.
- A list of all MIDs that should not be disputes (drops) according to Correlates of War coding rules, with explanations, is described here.
- A list of all MIDs that should be merged with other MIDs (merges) according to Correlates of War coding rules, with explanations, is described here.
- A list of all suggested changes to MIDs can be found herechange-report.pdf.
- Version 2.03 of the GLM-MID data (last updated 3/16/18) is here (see the <readme> file for a description of changes from previous versions).
- The MID replication paper (with Steve Miller and Erin Little) in which we examined the effects of these changes was published in International Studies Quarterly and is also available, with detailed appendices, here.
- A partial bibliography for MID cases can be found here.
- Finally, we have documented the changes in the Correlates of War MID data over the past few data releases--our review is here. We offer this to include added transparency for interested scholars.
ROBUSTNESS CHECKS FOR HETEROGENEITY IN THE MID DATA
- A large minority of dispute cases involve no actual state-to-state militarized action but instead enter the MID data through state protest. Controlling for these cases is important for proper inference and represents a much better way of handling heterogeneity than the popular use of fatal/non-fatal MIDs. See my paper with Erin Little in Political Science Research and Methods that examines this issue, here.
- Version 2.0 (08/01/2017) of the 401 protest-only cases, with brief explanations of what the dispute concerned can be found here. Again, each of these disputes involved state action against the private citizens of another state, and the other state protested but engaged in no militarized actions.
- Almost 4% of all MIDs were attacks on shipping during the Tanker War between Iran and Iraq (1984-1988). Those 84 MIDs are identified here (Version 1.0).
- Almost 2% of all MIDs involved one incident in which the state declared war during one of the world wars. Those 40 MIDs are identified here (Version 1.0).
MID NARRATIVES
- A two-volume book with 1- to 5-paragraph descriptions of the events of each MID will be available in Spring 2018 from Rowman and Littlefield Press. The full citation of the work is: Douglas M. Gibler, Militarized Interstate Dispute Narratives, 1816-2010, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2018.
MILITARIZED CONFRONTATION DATA (MID incidents)
- We are currently finishing a dyadic dataset of all militarized incidents within disputes, 1816-2010. The data should be available for release in early 2018. The project was NSF-funded, and the original proposal can be found here. These data will include the following:
- Data for each militarized incident--threat, display, or use of force--between two states in the international system, including incidents for wars until the threshold of 1,000 battle-deaths were reached
- Civilian fatality data for each of these incidents
- Specific location data for each of these incidents
FORMAL SETTLEMENT DATA
- I recently completed a funded project to collect all formal agreements that ended MIDs. The original proposal can be found here. Both the data and a theoretical analysis of the data should be available in early 2018.
CURRENT PROJECTS
- I began work on two separate NSF-funded projects in August 2017:
- The first project, with Steve Miller, will examine the evolution of issues and issue positions of all state actors within MIDs, 1816-2010. The project proposal can be found here.
- The second project, with Olga Chyzh and Mark Nieman, examines the effects of structural selection on commonly-used events data. The proposal can be found .