Politics Research Guide

The Council on Foreign Relations compiles this "interactive guide to ongoing conflicts around the world of concern to the United States. The map displays nearly thirty conflicts with background information and resources on each conflict."

The International Crisis Group tracks and forecasts conflict situations around the world. You can get the latest updates via this interactive map and then link through to a reverse chronological listing of updates on conflict situations in different countries going back a number of years.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) provides this interactive guide to conflicts around the world, 1975-present. It provides a summary of the conflict and its history as well as profiles of the various conflict actors with links directly into the data they collect on fatalities. The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) publishes an annual overview of conflict trends since 1946, using the UCDP data: Conflict Trends: A Global Overview, 1946–2022

This annual publication by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) reviews political, military and humanitarian trends in current conflicts around the world. It analyzes "the complex nexus between the domestic and geopolitical dimensions of most active conflicts," and provides detailed coverage of parties to each conflict (both state and non-state armed groups) as well as regional and transnational dimensions and interventions.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) provides regular, in-depth analyses of current conflicts around the world. Reports feature data, maps, and charts from ACLED's extensive real-time reporting and collecting.

US law requires the State Department to issue this annual report about developments related to terrorism around the world (both countries affected and state sponsors of terrorism). The report provides information on terrorist groups and their umbrella groups, groups financed by state sponsors of terrorism, all organizations on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, and other groups "determined by the Secretary to be relevant to the report." The report also includes statistics on casualties.

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)
• a dyad-year dataset identifying violent political protests, 1989-2019.

Major source of political violence and protest data from around the world. Contains 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. Temporal coverage varies by region, but new data is in real time.

New projects cover demonstrations and political violence in response to covid-19 and demonstrations and political violence in the US, 2020-present.

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.

Combines dozens of conflict indicators from ACLED, the UCDP Geolocated Event Dataset (GED), the PITF Worldwide Atrocities Dataset, and the Social Conflict in Africa Dataset (SCAD) with environmental and geospatial data. Environmental data include remote sensor data on vegetation, temperature, precipitation, drought, nighttime light emissions, and population density. AfroGrid integrates these variables into 0.5-degree resolution grid cells (i.e., geographic squares of about 60KM × 60KM at the equator for the entire African continent over the 1989–2020 period. For details, see Schon, Justin, and Ore Koren. 2022. “Introducing AfroGrid, a Unified Framework for Environmental Conflict Research in Africa.” Scientific Data 9 (1): 116. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01198-5. Data in .csv.

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.

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; colonial dependency; IGO membership; defense cooperation agreements; diplomatic exchanges; and bilateral trade. Most data 1816-2010s.

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.

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

Codes conquest attempts in the modern era. Attempts are defined as one state using military force to seize disputed territory without permission and with the intention to assume lasting control of that territory. Formal annexation is not required for a conquest attempt to occur. Data in .csv.

Codes instances of "deliberate use of lethal violence against non-combatant civilians by actors engaged in a wider political or military conflict." In 3 files, 01/1995-12/2012 (7,775 events), 01/2013-12/2015 (4000 events), and 01/2016-02/2020 (7450 events). Data were coded using conventional human coding and manually geocoded. Data in Excel.

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.

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. See associated paper: Birch, Sarah, and David Muchlinski. "The dataset of countries at risk of electoral violence." Terrorism and Political Violence 32, no. 2 (2020): 217-236, https://dx.doi.org./10.1080/09546553.2017.1364636.

A global, georeferenced event dataset, based on UCDP data, identifying electoral violence with lethal outcomes from 1989 to 2017. Covers events related to all relevant types of electoral contests, including subnational elections and referenda. Data in multiple formats. See accompanying paper: Fjelde, Hanne and Kristine Höglund (2021) “Introducing the Deadly Electoral Conflict Dataset (DECO),” Journal of Conflict Resolution, https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027211021620.

Includes data on the incidence of electoral contention and/or violence from up to 6 months before to 3 months after national elections in all countries, except for advanced industrialized democracies, that held competitive national elections between 1990 and 2012. ECAV contains more than 18,000 events of electoral contention for 1,208 national election rounds held in 136 countries. Data accessible upon application via a linked form. See accompanying paper: Daxecker, Ursula, Elio Amicarelli, and Alexander Jung. "Electoral contention and violence (ECAV): A new dataset," Journal of Peace Research 56, no. 5 (2019): 714-723. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002234331882387.

CShapes maps the borders and capitals of independent states and dependent territories from 1886 to 2019. The dataset can be downloaded in various formats and is also accessible through the CShapes R package. Allows user to compute distances between territories or produce maps at different points in time.

Dataset of events in which actors in a civil war or armed conflict hire CMAs in at least one year between 1980-2016 (Europe is excluded). Codes for client category (international governmental organizations, TNCs, NGOs and opposition groups), contracting unit, type of service provided, CMA type, ownership structure, and deployment size estimate. Data in Excel.

Codes all instances of US military intervention from 1776-2019, including wars, occupations, major troop deployments, humanitarian assistance, and other military actions abroad. Variables include location, objectives, use of force, foreign states involved, starting/ending year, outcomes, and fatalities, among many others. Data in Excel with an accompanying case narrative document and bibliography.

ETH Zurich and Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) dataset recording all reported ceasefires (~2200) in over 100 civil conflicts across 65 countries, 1989-2021. Variables include onset date, covered actors (including IDs to match to UCDP data), type (uni-, bi-, or multilateral), purpose (humanitarian, elections, etc.), coverage (partial or whole conflict zone), and different ways of coding the end of each ceasefire.

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 presents data on peacekeeping missions of total uniformed personnel contributions by country, month, type (troop, police, or expert/observer), and by mission, 1990-2018. Also has data on gender and assessed contributions. Ongoing monthly reports are on the UN Peacekeeping site.

Project at Uppsala University provides data on UN peacekeeping deployments. It offers information on key attributes of peacekeeping deployments at the local level, including location, size, troop type, headquarters, troop-contributing countries and other variables. Data is derived from United Nations (UN) mission deployment maps, UN Secretary-General mission progress reports, and the Dag Hammarskjold Library Section peacekeeping mission deployment maps. Easily integrates with other UCDP data. Data in csv and R formats, 1994-2020.

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.

Includes peacekeeping operations (PKO), special political missions (SPM), and special envoys/advisors (SE/SA) and codes the evolving mandate tasks of all UN peace missions and classifies both the mandate tasks as well as overall peace missions. Identifies 41 mandate tasks in 3 categories: minimalist (MIN), moderate (MOD), or maximalist (MAX). 1991-2020. Data in Excel or interactive database.

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.

The Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) project provides data about military alliance agreements signed by all countries of the world between 1815 and 2018. Covering more than 700 alliances, it codes info about treaty members, what obligations they assume, and how the alliance is institutionalized. Data available in six different units of analysis: the alliance, the alliance phase, the alliance member, state-year, dyad-year, and directed dyad-year. Data in .csv and Stata formats.

Codes 5,000+ operations 1977-2016 drawn from historical news reports. Lists each exercise’s name, location, start and end dates, participant countries activities involved, and more. Data in tab delimited format.

Datasets on alliances, IGO membership, defense cooperation agreements, and diplomatic exchanges. Most data 1816-2006.

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. Variables include date, COW country code, type of coup, and multiple indicators categorizing the actors involved, means used, and outcome of the coup attempts. 1945-2019. Data in csv.

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

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 (does not include the US). Variables include protester demands, government responses, protest location, and protester identities. Data in tab delimited format.

Compiled and cleaned version of the Crowd Counting Consortium's data on political crowds in the United States, including marches, protests, rallies, demonstrations, strikes, and similar actions. Data in .csv. A data visualization dashboard is also available.

"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)."

Major portal for datasets related to all aspects of humanitarian and human rights issues.

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.

NHRIs are independent institutions mandated to promote and protect citizens' human rights. This project provides quantitative data on organizational characteristics and the de jure responsibilities and abilities of NHRIs in more than 100 countries. The Behavioral Data, once available, will provide information on each NHRI’s de facto responsibilities and abilities. Data in .csv; dates vary, but generally 1990+.

Includes 8.2 million events extracted from 21.2 million news stories. Analyzes content from the New York Times (1945-2018), the BBC Monitoring's Summary of World Broadcasts (1979-2019), the Wall Street Journal (1945-2005), and the Central Intelligence Agency’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (1995-2004). It documents the agents, locations, and issues at stake in a wide variety of conflict, cooperation and communicative events in the Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO) ontology. Data in .csv.

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 daily. 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)) according to the CAMEO taxonomy. See the documentation (use the 1.0 dataset version). Data is in tab-delimited text format.

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.)

Detailed news, analysis, and data on terrorism:

• database of over ~500,000+ geocoded global terrorist and insurgent events as well as government counter-terrorism events. 2009-present. Extensive set of variables covering targets, tactics, groups, and casualties.
• profiles of more than 300 terrorist and insurgent groups across the world, covering threat assessment, objectives, tactics, targets, areas of operation, personnel, recruitment, and rivalries.
• detailed news and analyses on terrorism and security, including maps, charts, and more

Database on global terror incidents. 200,000+ incidents from 1970-2020, including domestic, transnational, and international incidents. Codes for date, location (country and city), weapons used, type of target, casualties, perpetrator, and source of information.

Dataset coding more than 14,000 incidents of international or transnational terrorism that have an international impact, 1968-2022. Includes 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.

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.

Database on all suicide attacks 1982-2019 (~8,000 attacks) and codes for more than 60 variables, including multiple variables about the attack, targets, weapons used, demographic and biographical characteristics of the attackers, credit claims/denials, and sources. Data goes through multiple rounds of verification and emphasis is placed on collecting claims from original sources, including other languages. Data in Excel.

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

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

The Center for Strategic and International Studies provides overviews and assessments of insurgencies and extremist movements around the world.

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.

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, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. annual data from 2009 on. Last updated in 2021.

Codes dozens of variables on more than 500 pro-government militias for all countries from 1981 to 2014. Categories include the PGM's lifecycle (origin, termination, predecessors), organizational characteristics, its connection to the government, membership, purpose, benefits to govt, targets & tactics, and types of support.

Codes state action toward terrorist organizations or their constituencies on a day-to-day basis. Covers Israel 1987-2004 and Canada 1985-2013. Data in Excel

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.

The ADL's H.E.A.T. Map™ (Hate, Extremism, Antisemitism, Terrorism) captures specific incidents by state and nationwide with details on the event, tactics, incident type. Sourced from news and media reports, government documents (including police reports), victim reports, extremist-related sources, Center on Extremism investigations, and more. Raw data downloads to .csv. 2002-present.

TEVUS integrates four open-source data sets to facilitate more robust and sophisticated analyses of the behaviors, operations, and activities of violent extremists within the United States: the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), the American Terrorism Study (ATS), and the U.S. component of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), as well as the Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States (PPT-US) data set. Data is free but must be requested.

Codes various hate groups according to ideology and tracks their location in the U.S., 2000-present. Yearly lists can be downloaded to .csv.

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.

Covers 1101 multilateral, plurilateral, and purely bilateral sanction cases over the 1950-2019 time period. The GSDB classifies sanctions by type (e.g., trade, financial, travel, etc.); by political objective (e.g., policy change, destabilization of a regime, war prevention, human rights, etc.); by the perceived degree of success (e.g., failed sanctions, full compliance, etc.). Data must be requested via email to the authors.

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.

Global, open dataset of entities (people, groups/corporations, assets) that are subject to sanctions (based on various lists from the UN, US, UK, EU, INTERPOL, World Bank, and more). OpenSanctions also collects data about a number of non-target adjacent entities (e.g., a polictical party that a politician is a member of, or an address they are linked to). Data in JSON and csv.

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

Comparative assessment of the impacts and effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions regimes imposed 1991-2014. 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. Data in Excel and SPSS. Qualitative database with full text descriptions also available. Also see their site https://unsanctionsapp.com/.

The Stockholm Process on the Implementation of Targeted Sanctions (SPITS) lists all ongoing and terminated sanctions that have been instituted through the UN Security Council. The list includes all sanctions since the start of the UN and is regularly updated. It is organized according to the targeted country.

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.