International Conflicts, 1816-2010
Militarized Interstate Dispute Narratives
By (author) Douglas M. Gibler
Publication date:
22 March 2018Length of book:
1174 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442275584
A militarized interstate dispute (MID) refers to international conflict short of war. The MID dataset from the Correlates of War Project catalogs summary data on all threats, displays, and uses of force between two or more states. These dispute data are essential in quantitative analyses of international conflict and other issues, such as diplomatic efforts and security policy. The problem however is that they offer little information barring a brief summary of the conflict event. This work remedies it by providing original, detailed narrative descriptions of what occurred in each case. Organized by rivalry and within geographic regions, these case descriptions, written specifically for this work, will be an essential resource for those interested in the causes, histories, and consequences of international conflicts.
One of a dozen datasets drawn from the electronic Correlates of War Project, which is employed by economists, sociologists, and political scientists to look at violent conflict, this one for militarized interstate disputes (MID) notes with all manner of coding and numbers over 2,000 global disputes that have occurred over two centuries. Quite opaque for most generalists and others unfamiliar with the project, a major flaw in this subset, identified by Gibler and his associates, has been the lack of detailed narrative summaries for the individual conflicts. As remedy, detailed original narrative descriptions for each, in various lengths and exclusive to this work, have been prepared, organized by rivalry and within geographic regions. This is a unique and helpful “companion” work for those international relations specialists who regularly employ this segment of the project, or for those who just wish historical or consequential details on unremembered quarrels, e.g., that between Peru and Spain in March 1859 (No. 1594) or Belgium and France in January–July 1923 ( No. 177). One can hope that similar reference works will be developed for the other project datasets, especially those in the areas of Diplomatic Exchange, 1817–2005 and Bilateral Trade, 1870–2009.
Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.