Contextualizing Conflict: Breaking Down Political Violence in the MID Dataset

• In Event: Poster Session: Conflict Processes I

Abstract

The Correlates of War MID datasets have been a key resource used by scholars investigating interstate violence. COW projects and updates have provided us with empirical support for a wide variety of conflict theories and at different levels of analyses. Its utility for understanding actual political violence processes, however, is lacking. This project seeks to contextualize the events comprising this data, adding a new series of variables on civilian war costs and weaponry used throughout the course of militarized disputes. The goal is to better identify the scale and scope of political violence imposed by one state on another. Specifically, it attempts to uncover patterns of conflict actions taken by states with different domestic political arrangements. The literature has made impressive theoretical strides recently in unpacking regime types, especially dictatorships, and their propensity to initiate or reciprocate disputes (Lai and Slater 2006; Weeks 2008, Kinne and Marinov 2012). Here, I ask what actions and degrees of violence we should expect to observe during disputes featuring different political subtypes (democracy, single party rule, military rule, electoral autocracy, monarchy). Who and which regimes explicitly target non-combatants, caused civilian death, displacement, or injury? The paper draws on the dispute narratives of Gibler (2018), uses Lexis Uni databases to code events, and is compiled for years 1990-2010. Collection of new data on war can have implications for theories of audience costs and reciprocation, as well as insights on the risk-taking by leaders under certain political constraints. Moreover, the data is a useful, new addition to scholars interested in civilian related dependent variables.

Author

• Richie A Romero, Arizona State University