cow_war_inter: Correlates of War Inter-State War Data (v. 4.0)

In peacesciencer: Tools and Data for Quantitative Peace Science Research

Correlates of War Inter-State War Data (v. 4.0)

Description

These are a modified version of the inter-state war data from the Correlates of War project. Data are version 4.0. The temporal domain is 1816-2007. Data are functionally directed dyadic war-year.

Usage

cow_war_inter

Format

A data frame with 1932 observations on the following 15 variables.

warnum

the Correlates of War war number

ccode1

the Correlates of War state code for side1

ccode2

the Correlates of War state code for side2

year

a numeric vector for the year

cowinteronset

a dummy variable for whether this is an inter-state war onset (i.e. either the year in StartYear1 or StartYear2 in the raw data)

cowinterongoing

a numeric constant of 1

sidea1

a numeric vector for the side in the war for ccode1, either 1 or 2

sidea2

a numeric vector for the side in the war for ccode2, either 1 or 2

initiator1

a dummy variable that equals 1 if ccode1 initiated the war

initiator2

a dummy variable that equals 1 if ccode2 initiated the war

outcome1

the outcome for ccode1 as numeric vector. Outcomes are 1 (winner), 2 (loser), 3 (compromise/tied), 4 (transformed into another type of war), 5 (ongoing at end of 2007, which is not observed in these data), 6 (stalemate), 7 (conflict continues below severity of war), and 8 (changed sides)

outcome2

the outcome for ccode2 as numeric vector. Outcomes are 1 (winner), 2 (loser), 3 (compromise/tied), 4 (transformed into another type of war), 5 (ongoing at end of 2007, which is not observed in these data), 6 (stalemate), 7 (conflict continues below severity of war), and 8 (changed sides)

batdeath1

the estimated deaths for ccode1 (-9 = unknown)

batdeath2

the estimated deaths for ccode2 (-9 = unknown)

resume

a dummy variable that equals 1 if this is a conflict resumption episode

Details

See data-raw directory for how these data were generated. These data are here if you want it, but I caution against using them as gospel. There are a few problems here. One: -9s proliferate the data for battle deaths on either side, which is unhelpful. There are 10 cases where the sum of battle deaths is exactly 1,000 or 1,001. This is suspicious. The "side" variables are not well-explained—in fact they're not explained at all in the codebook— and this can lead a user astray if they want to interpret them analogous to the sidea variables in the Correlates of War Militarized Interstate Dispute data. You probably want to use the initiator variables for this. Further, the war data routinely betray the MID data and the two do not speak well to each other. The language Sarkees and Wayman (2010) use in their book talk about how MIDs "precede" a war or are "associated" with a war, which forgets the war data are supposed to be a subset of the MID data. In one case (Gulf War), they get the associated dispute number wrong and, in one prominent case (War of Bosnian Independence), they argue no MID exists at all (it's actually MID#3557).

References

Sarkees, Meredith Reid, and Frank Wheldon Wayman. 2010. Resort to War: A Data Guide to Inter-State, Extra-State, Intra-State, and Non-State Wars, 1816-2007. Washington DC: CQ Press.

peacesciencer documentation built on March 31, 2023, 8:37 p.m.