Politics Resources Guide

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) offers a number of datasets on organised violence in multiple data formats (they also provide an interactive Conflict Encyclopedia:

• Armed Conflict Dataset (1946+) in conflict-year and dyad-year versions
• geo-referenced event dataset, coding individual events of organized violence down to the village level and by day (1989+). Also includes a "conflict polygons" dataset showing the geographical spread of conflict.
• separate conflict onset and termination datasets (1946+)
• non-state conflicts, one-sided violence (also a separate file coding for ethnicity), and battle-related deaths (1989+)
• peace agreements, coding info about parties of the agreement and provisions of the accords (1975+)
• data on the existence, type, and providers of external support for all warring parties (1975-2009)

ACLED is the most comprehensive public collection of political violence data for developing states, primarily in Africa and Asia. These data contain information on the specific dates and locations of political violence, the types of event, the groups involved, fatalities and changes in territorial control. Information is recorded on the battles, killings, riots, and recruitment activities of rebels, governments, militias, armed groups, protesters and civilians. Event data are derived from a variety of sources, mainly concentrating on reports from war zones, humanitarian agencies, and research publications. All ACLED data can be downloaded on this site by country in excel and GIS formats.

SCAD includes protests, riots, strikes, inter-communal conflict, government violence against civilians, and other forms of social conflict not systematically tracked in other conflict datasets. SCAD currently includes information on thousands of events from 1990 to 2017, covering all of Africa, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

"The Mass Mobilization (MM) data are an effort to understand citizen movements against governments, what citizens want when they demonstrate against governments, and how governments respond to citizens." Codes protests against governments for 162 countries between 1990-2018. Variables include protester demands, government responses, protest location, and protester identities. Data in tab delimited format.

A spatio-temporal grid structure allowing for consistent comparisons in studying conflict composed of 0.5x0.5 decimal degree grid cells that cover all terrestrial areas of the world.

• Each grid cell contains data by grid cell on socio-economic conditions, ethnic groups, physical geography, climatic conditions, natural resources, and more.
• Designed to merge with UCDP Georeferenced Events, ACLED, and GeoEPR datasets.
• Downloadable as shapefiles and data in .csv format.

Various cross-national time-series conflict datasets, including data on:

• forcibly displaced populations
• major episodes of political violence
• ethnic and revolutionary war
• genocide
• high casualty terrorist bombings
• coups d'etat
• failed/fragile states.

Dates vary, but mostly 1950s-present. Data downloadable in SPSS or Excel.

Major data collection on war, originally headed by J. David Singer and now Paul Diehl. Click on "Available Data Sets" on the left to get the data. Includes datasets covering COW country codes; inter-state, intra-state, non-state, and extra-state war; militarized interstate disputes; national material capabilities; alliances; contiguity; territorial change; IGOs; and bilateral trade.

Codes for territorial claims, river claims, maritime claims, and regime claims. Supplementary datasets include colonial history, historical state names, and multilateral treaties of pacific settlement.

The SVAC Dataset includes reports of conflict-related sexual violence committed by government/state military, pro-government militias, and rebel/insurgent forces. Covers all state-based conflicts active in the years 1989-2015, as defined by the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Database. Data were collected for all years of active conflict (defined by 25 battle deaths or more per year) and for five years post-conflict. Includes information about the prevalence, perpetrators, victims, forms, timing, and locations of the reported sexual violence by each armed actor in each conflict-year. Data is coded from reports by the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Data in Excel.

Repository of micro-level, subnational event data on armed conflict and contention around the world that combines multiple open-source data collections in one comprehensive electronic archive. Currently includes data on armed conflict and contention from 156 countries (1969-2017), from 21 data sources, including both large data collections and individual scholars. xSub organizes these data into common units of analysis, by space (country, province, district, grid cell, electoral constituency) and time (year, month, week, day). Data in .csv and also available through an R package.

"Produces aggregate-level data on resistance campaigns from 1900-2013 (NAVCO 1), annual data on campaign behavior from 1946-2013 (NAVCO 2), and events data on tactical selection in a sample of 26 countries with major nonviolent and violent campaigns from 1991-2012 (NAVCO 3)."

Provides detailed dyadic information on electoral violence in 101 countries between 1995 and 2013. Covers national-level legislative and executive contests only. Electoral violence is measured in a ten-month window around each election. Data in .csv.

Source for research and data on security and conflict. SIPRI has databases on military expenditures, arms transfers, arms embargoes, and peacekeeping operations.

Drawing from UN archival records, the International Peace Institute at George Washington University presents data on peacekeeping missions of total uniformed personnel contributions by country, month, type (troop, police, or expert/observer), and by mission, 1990+. Also has data on gender and assessed contributions.

The PAM database is a unique source of qualitative and quantitative longitudinal data on the implementation of 34 Comprehensive Peace Agreements (CPAs) negotiated in civil wars between 1989 and 2012. The implementation history of each provision in an accord is tracked and scored, yielding a 10 year implementation score for each accord. The database can be searched by keyword, accord, or provision type.

Investigates the sources, processes, and outcomes of all military-security crises since the end of World War I, covering 470 crises and 1036 crisis actors. There is a system-level dataset covering the crises and another covering the actors. Includes scores of variables covering onset; actor attributes, behavior, and crisis management; superpower activity; involvement by international organizations; mediation and outcome; and more. Also includes text summaries of each crisis. Data in .csv.

Project of the Pardee Center at the University of Denver to measure various aspects of international relations. Datasets measure diplomatic representation, membership in (and importance of) intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and signatories and ratifiers of multilateral treaties deposited at the UN. Generally 1945-present; datasets in Excel.

Provides a list of coups by country and by country-year. They define coups as "illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive," and successes as episodes in which the perpetrators control power for at least 7 days. Data is in txt format and updated through 2015.

The CDP’s objective is to compile, for 165 countries in the post WWII era, a more comprehensive listing, documentation, and categorization of coups for use by researchers. The project is ongoing, but variables include date, COW country code, type of coup, and multiple indicators categorizing the actors involved, means used, and outcome of the coup attempts. Data in Excel.

List of FIRCs, with indicators for whether initiated by democracies and if institutional (vs. leadership) changes. (Located under the Supplementary Material tab.)

Codes government respect for 15 internationally recognized human rights for 202 countries, annually from 1981-2011. Data in Excel.

Global dataset that codes for the deliberate killing of non-combatant civilians in the context of a wider political conflict, 1995-present. Data are coded and georeferenced using human coding rather than automated methods. Data in Excel.

Drawing on reports by the U.S. State Dept. and Amnesty International, the PTS codes for state-perpetrated human rights violations, such as killings, tor­ture, dis­ap­pear­ances, and polit­ic­al im­pris­on­ment.

• Each country is scored on a 5 point scale based on the scale and severity of the abuses. Data in Excel, 1976+.
• Also includes SVS codes for societal violence by non-state actors, disaggregated by type of perpetrator and type of victim, 2013-2014.

GDELT monitors the world's news media in print, broadcast, and web formats, in over 100 languages and records over 300 georeferenced categories of physical activities from riots and protests to peace appeals and diplomatic exchanges across the entire planet dating back to January 1, 1979 and updated every 15 minutes. Nearly 60 attributes are captured for each event, including the approximate location of the action and those involved. Algorithms translate the textual descriptions of world events captured in the news media into codified entries in the form WHO-DOES WHAT-TO WHOM (e.g., RUSSIA TROOP-DEPLOY UKRAINE (CRIMEA)). Data is available in multiple formats. For smaller extracts (up to 20,000 records), use the Exporter Tool.

Global event data made available by a DARPA-funded project. Event data consists of coded interactions between socio-political actors. Events are automatically identified and extracted from news articles by an algorithmic event coder. These events are triples consisting of a source actor, an event type (according to the CAMEO taxonomy of events), and a target actor. Geographical-temporal metadata are also extracted and associated with the relevant events within a news article. Data in tab delimited format, 1995-present (one year lag). Purely U.S. domestic events are excluded. (See also the text_to_CAMEO program to convert the files to a more standard event data format.)

Includes several million events extracted from 14 million news stories in the New York Times (1945-2005), the BBC Monitoring's Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB) (1979-2015) and the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) (1995-2004). Documents the agents, locations, and actions in a wide variety of events using the CAMEO coding scheme. Data in .csv.

Detailed news, analysis, and data on terrorism.

• database of over 350,000+ geocoded global terrorist and insurgent events 2009-present, with extensive array of indicators for targets, tactics, groups, and casualties
• includes extensive array of variables on counterterrorism events
• profiles of nearly 300 terrorist and insurgent groups across the world, covering threat assessment, aims and objectives, tactics, targets, areas of operation, personnel, recruitment, and rivalries
• country analysis and briefings
• thousands of news articles and analyses
• visualization tools (maps, charts, etc.)

Database on global terror incidents.

• 170,000+ incidents from 1970 to present
• includes domestic, transnational, and international incidents
• date, location (country and city), weapons used, type of target, casualties, perpetrator, source of information

Dataset coding more than 14,000 incidents of international or transnational terrorism that have an international impact, 1968-2016.

• more than 40 variables covering aspects of the incident, terrorists, victims, damages and casualties, and logistical success
• supplemental files address characteristics and fates of both hostages and terrorists after attacks
• data in Excel format

Data on terrorism incidents 1968-2009, covering over 40,000 incidents of international and domestic terrorism.

• Search by date, region, country, perpetrator, tactic, weapon, target, # of fatalities, and more.
• Full database can be downloaded in Excel.

Searchable database on all suicide attacks 1974-2016 (more than 5,000 attacks).

• location, target type, and weapon used
• demographic and biographical characteristics of suicide attackers
• draws from native language sources (e.g., Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Tamil) in addition to English

Traces the evolution of militant organizations and their interactions over time. Features:

• interactive maps chart relationships among groups over time
  • individual maps for Syria, Iraq, Italy, North Caucasus, Philippines, Somalia, and Pakistan
  • global maps of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda
• in-depth profiles of individual groups
  • covers group size, formation, ideology, activity, leaders, resources, ties to other groups, and community relationships

Detailed and well-sourced profiles of extremist groups and individual leaders, including details on organizational structure, financing, recruitment, and more.

Features descriptive profiles on more than 100 terrorist groups. Also includes entries on key individuals, tactics/methods, culture/ideology, and more.

Independent research center at West Point for the study of terrorism.

• reports on terrorist strategy, structure, and ideology
• a database of primary source documents captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere that contextualize the inner-functioning of al-Qa’ida and other security threats
• a militant imagery project documenting visual motifs
• reports and primary source documents (with translations) on the Islamic State in Syria & Iraq (ISIL/ISIS).

Monthly in-depth profiles of the most important and under-analyzed leaders of extremist and militant movements around the world.

Identifies, compiles, and analyzes micro-level conflict data on insurgency, civil war, and other political violence worldwide.

• demography/socioeconomics, geography, infrastructure, public opinion, violence data in GIS and tabular forms
• Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam
• links to external data repositories for the countries covered

Measures the positive and negative reputation building efforts of domestic terror groups.

• 443 groups, 1980-2011
• positive indicators: public goods provision, media power, and political party existence
• negative indicators: forced recruitment, child recruitment, and forced funding

Tracks radical Islamist movements on a national, regional and global level.

• Browse by movement or by country.
• Entries detail radical Islamist activity and the relationship of Islam to society and the state.

Database tracking US drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen (and soon Somalia).

• annual data from 2009 on
• location, target, military and civilian casualties, links to news reports
• graphs, charts, and maps of strikes

Codes information on pro-government militias for all countries from 1981 to 2007.

Codes state action toward terrorist organizations or their constituencies on a day-to-day basis.

• covers Israel 1987-2004 and Canada 1985-2013

Official list of foreign terrorist organizations as designated by the U.S. Secretary of State

Interactive literature review of qualitative and/or quantitative research examining 183 different hypotheses on how VEOs may be negatively influenced.

Game theoretic models predict that sanctions that would be effective typically would bring about change in the target's behavior at the threat stage and would never be applied. To test these models, this project has collected data on instances of both the threat and implementation of sanctions during the period from 1945-2005.

E-book version of the 3d edition of Hufbauer's classic text on economic sanctions. Chapter appendices have lists of cases and additional info. Selected and updated case studies are available online.

This database gives information on all multilateral arms embargoes that have been implemented by an international organization, such as the EU or UN, or by a group of nations. It includes both legally binding embargoes and those that are solely political commitments. It provides details of the aims, scope and amendments to all arms embargoes that are in force, or have been in force since 1998 and to most that were in force before 1998.

Information on official UN measures and sanctions imposed on individuals and entities.

Comparative assessment of the impacts and effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions regimes over the past twenty years. Focuses on case episodes within a broader country analysis to track changes in targeted sanctions over time. Also analyzes their effectiveness in terms of the different purposes of targeted sanctions, whether they are intended to coerce, constrain, or signal targets. Quantitative database to be released in 2014. Also see their site http://www.sanctionsapp.com/.

Information on EU sanctions as implemented under the Common Foreign & Security Policy (CFSP).

Very clear presentation of information on sanctions implemented by the UK against various countries and groups.

Best source for CRS reports, hearings, Congressional committee reports, and more on sanctions, embargoes, etc. Try searching for "international sanctions" or "embargoes" with a country name or within a certain date range.

"The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers" and others.

The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) controls export embargoes of arms and defense items to sanctioned countries. Maintains a list of embargoed countries with a link to official Federal Register notices of embargoes.

List of nonproliferation sanctions maintained by the Dept. of State.

The Bureau's mission is "to protect the security of the United States, which includes its national security, economic security, cyber security, and homeland security" by "implementing and enforcing the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which regulate the export and reexport of most commercial items." Most items BIS regulates are “dual-use” items–those that have both commercial and military or proliferation applications.