add_cow_majors: Add Correlates of War major power information to a data frame

In svmiller/peacesciencer: Tools and Data for Quantitative Peace Science Research

Add Correlates of War major power information to a data frame

Description

add_cow_majors() allows you to add Correlates of War major power variables to a dyad-year, leader-year, leader dyad-year, or state-year data frame.

Usage

add_cow_majors(data, mry = TRUE)

Arguments

data	a data frame with appropriate peacesciencer attributes
mry	logical, defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the data carry forward the identity of the major powers to the most recently concluded calendar year. If FALSE, the panel honors the right bound of the data's temporal domain and creates NAs for observations past it.

Details

Be mindful that the data are fundamentally state-year and that extensions to leader-level data should be understood as approximations for leaders in a given state-year.

The mry argument works on an informal assumption that the composition of the major powers are unchanged since the most recent data update. It simply carries forward the most recent observation from the end of the data and assumes there are no new major powers to note. Perhaps this is one way of thinking about the absence of yearly updates from Correlates of War for its composition data sets (i.e. state system, major powers). If there was a need to update it in light of current events (e.g. the elimination or creation of a new state, or the arrival/elimination of great power status), there would be an immediate update to acknowledge it. The absence of an update means you can just carry forward the most recent observations.

Value

add_cow_majors() takes a data frame and adds information about major power status for the given state or dyad in that year. If the data are dyad-year (or leader dyad-year), the function returns two columns for whether the first state (i.e. ccode1) or the second state (i.e. ccode2) are major powers in the given year, according to the Correlates of War. 1 = is a major power. 0 = is not a major power. If the data are state-year (or leader-year), the functions returns just one column (cowmaj) for whether the state was a major power in a given state-year.

Author(s)

Steven V. Miller

References

Correlates of War Project. 2017. "State System Membership List, v2016." Online, https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/state-system-membership/

Examples

# just call `library(tidyverse)` at the top of the your script
library(magrittr)

cow_ddy %>% add_cow_majors()

svmiller/peacesciencer documentation built on July 16, 2025, 7:01 p.m.