R/rd-mmb_war.R

In stevedata: Steve's Toy Data for Teaching About a Variety of Methodological, Social, and Political Topics

#' @importFrom tibble tibble
NULL

#' Mutual Military Build-Ups and War
#'
#' A simple data set on mutual military build-ups and war, useful for teaching
#'  about a long-standing empirical debate in international relations by way of
#'  basic tests (like a chi-square test).
#'
#' @format A data frame with 2324 observations on the following 9 variables.
#' \describe{
#' \item{\code{ccode1}}{a Correlates of War state code}
#' \item{\code{ccode2}}{another Correlates of War state code}
#' \item{\code{tssr_id}}{a rivalry identifier}
#' \item{\code{micnum}}{the start year of a confrontation between the two states}
#' \item{\code{year}}{the start year of a confrontation between the two states}
#' \item{\code{dyfatmin}}{the minimum estimated dyadic fatalities in the confrontation}
#' \item{\code{dyfatmax}}{the maximum estimated dyadic fatalities in the confrontation}
#' \item{\code{sumevents}}{the total number of events in the confrontation}
#' \item{\code{mmb}}{a dummy variable that equals 1 if the confrontation came after the start of a mutual military build-up}
#' }
#'
#' @details
#'
#' The unit of analysis for these data are non-directed dyadic confrontations
#' for strategic rivals. Be mindful that confrontations start with the first
#' event of any kind. See Gibler and Miller (2024a, 2024b) for more about events
#' and confrontations. See Thompson et al. (2021) for more information about
#' strategic rivalries.
#'
#' Mutual military build-ups (MMBs, for short) are a slightly more evasive label
#' I'm using for the more familiar "arms race." They are operationalized largely
#' from Gibler et al. (2005). Briefly: mutual military build-ups are any episode
#' in 1) a rivalry relationship where 2) each dyadic partner is increasing their
#' military expenditure *or* personnel, 3) eight percent or more from the
#' previous year, 4) for at least three years where 5) historical evidence largely
#' corroborates a directionality in the mobilization of the kind we would
#' broadly conceptualize (a la Richardson, 1939). In other words, the
#' mutual mobilization isn't coincidental or a function of other priorities.
#'
#' The data I recreate here follow Gibler et al. (2005), but use newer
#' capabilities and rivalry data. I further employ some case exclusion rules
#' that would not otherwise be evident in a reading of Gibler et al. (2005).
#' First, I take some care to exclude cases where it is pretty clear that what
#' Gibler et al. (2005) call an arms race is more accurately just the mobilization
#' of the war itself. For example, their arms race #26 between China and Japan
#' occurs between 1940 and 1944, though the ongoing war between both comfortably
#' covers it. Related, I employ an admittedly ad hoc termination date to end when
#' we might comfortably note a war is ongoing (see: the various World War 1
#' arms races). Further, I often extend a year to an arms race if one side
#' started mobilizing first and the other side only started mobilizing the next
#' year and/or one side continued mobilizing for a year after the other stopped.
#' This is why, for example, I have an extra year in the Spain-Morocco build-up in
#' the early 1970s (Spain mobilized through 1975). There were some cases where
#' I disagreed that something could be considered an arms race/mutual military
#' build-up by this metric. For example, the build-up observed between Somalia
#' and Ethiopia in the 1970s (their arms race #44) is an interesting case where
#' it's clear Ethiopia is mobilizing. However, the data suggest only one year
#' of mobilization for Somalia (1974). I remove those cases from my recreation.
#'
#' @references
#'
#' Gibler, Douglas M. 2005. "Taking Arms against a Sea of Troubles: Conventional
#' Arms Races during Periods of Rivalry" *Journal of Peace Research* 42(2):
#' 131-47.
#'
#' Gibler, Douglas M., and Steven V. Miller. 2024a. "The Militarized Interstate
#' Confrontation Dataset, 1816-2014." *Journal of Conflict Resolution* 68(2–3):
#' 562–86.
#'
#' Gibler, Douglas M., and Steven V. Miller. 2024b. "The Militarized Interstate
#' Events (MIE) Dataset, 1816–2014." *Conflict Management and Peace Science*
#' 41(4): 463–81.
#'
#' Richardson, Lewis F. 1939. *Generalized Foreign Politics*. Cambridge
#' University Press.
#'
#' Thompson, William R., Kentaro Sakuwa, and Prashant Hosur Suhas. 2021.
#' *Analyzing Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Types of Rivalry,
#' Regional Variation, and Escalation/De-escalation*. Springer.

"mmb_war"