Political Science

An open-access database with datasets on international relations topics such as interstate disputes, membership in intergovernmental organizations, and international alliances. The Correlates of War project collects and disseminates quantitative data in international relations. Datasets include: COW Country Codes; State System Membership; COW War Data; Militarized Interstate Disputes; Militarized Interstate Dispute Locations; National Material Capabilities; World Religion Data; Formal Alliances; Territorial Change; Direct Contiguity; Colonial/Dependency Contiguity; Intergovernmental Organizations; Diplomatic Exchange; Trade.

An open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2015 (with annual updates planned for the future). The GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period. Currently contains information on over 150,000 terrorist attacks, 75,000 bombings, 17,000 assassinations, and 9,000 kidnappings since 1970. Includes information on at least 45 variables for each case, with more recent incidents including information on more than 120 variables. Over 4,000,000 news articles and 25,000 news sources were reviewed to collect incident data from 1998 to 2015 alone.

This study contains data on 6,754 political instability events in 84 selected nations in the period 1948-1965. These data, which permit measurement of political instability and the correlates of internal conflict behavior, are concerned with conflict directed by groups and individuals in the prevailing political system against other groups or persons, and with uncovering the determinants of stability within all national political systems. The variables in the dataset are divided into four basic types: variables that identify events, classify events, describe events, and evaluate events. The study provides a conflict intensity rating for each event. Political instability events are classified from low to high and include institutionally prescribed elections, the fall of cabinets, martial laws, assassinations of significant group leaders, mass arrests, coup d'etats, and civil wars.

This site contains information on and access to the most recent update of the Polity data series, originally designed by Ted Robert Gurr. The Polity IV Project continues the Polity research tradition of coding the authority characteristics of states in the world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. SIPRI produces databases of data in five major areas: Arms Transfers; Arms Industry; SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; SIPRI also provides information on arms embargoes, provides national reports on arms exports, and links to all publicly accessible national reports on arms exports.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is the world’s main provider of data on organized violence and the oldest ongoing data collection project for civil war, with a history of almost 40 years. Its definition of armed conflict has become the global standard of how conflicts are systematically defined and studied. UCDP produces high-quality data, which are systematically collected, have global coverage, are comparable across cases and countries, and have long time series which are updated annually. Furthermore, the program is a unique source of information for practitioners and policymakers.