MID4: UPDATING THE MILITARIZED DISPUTE DATA SET, 2002-2010

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。战争项目的军事化争端数据集(MID)是国际冲突研究中最突出和最常用的集合。最新版本(MID3)于2004年发布，涵盖1993-2001年。更新该数据集的过程耗时近四年，涉及11个研究中心，非常耗费人力和成本。要在相对连续的基础上更新中期数据，需要一个更流畅、更小、更高效、成本更低的项目。因此，这项研究将纳入一个迭代过程，利用从旧的MID3项目中提取的信息来开发一个计算机程序，该程序能够识别有关军事争端的新闻报道。使用这一过程，研究人员将收集新闻报道，以更新2002-2010年期间的中期数据集。该项目制定的程序还将使此后几乎不间断地更新中期数据。项目完成后，将提供1816-2010年期间的中期数据。由于中期数据被学术界广泛使用，这一更新将有利于研究人员解决广泛的研究问题，包括但不限于民主和平、权力周期、军备竞赛、联盟、冲突管理、转而使用武力、政治地理和领土争端、危机升级、区域安全、贸易和相互依存、国际规范、集体安全、军事战略、巴勒斯坦人的态度、干预和早期预警系统。作为一个具体的例子，更新的数据可以做什么，而不是用现有的集合，从亨廷顿和S的“文明冲突”争论中得出的许多假设集中在1991年以来的时期；目前我们无法就这些假设的经验有效性得出强有力的结论。MID数据集的另一个值与它为其提供基础的派生数据集有关。例如，MID集的二元版本允许研究人员考虑特定国家对的相互作用。其他例子包括战争行为关联(BCOW)数据集和战争问题关联(ICow)项目，该项目正在收集关于世界政治中有争议的问题的系统数据。总体而言，许多研究人员不仅依赖于中间数据集直接用于他们自己的研究，而且学者们还利用这些数据来构建其他有价值的数据集。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The Correlates of War Project's Militarized Dispute Data (MID) set is the most prominent and heavily used collection in the study of international conflict. The most recent version (MID3) was released in 2004 and covered the years 1993-2001. The process of updating that data set -which took almost four years and involved eleven research centers- was extremely labor-intensive and expensive. To update the MID data on a relatively continuing basis requires a smoother, smaller, more efficient, and less expensive project. Therefore, this study will incorporate an iterated process utilizing information drawn from the old MID3 project to develop a computer program that is able to identify news stories about militarized disputes. Using this process, the researchers will gather news reports to update the MID data sets for the period 2002-2010. The procedures established by this project will also allow for virtually continuous updating of the MID data thereafter. Upon completion of the project the MID data will be available for the period 1816-2010. Because the MID data are so widely used by the scholarly community, this update will benefit researchers who are addressing a wide range of research questions, including but not limited to the democratic peace, power cycles, arms races, alliances, conflict management, diversionary uses of force, political geography and territorial disputes, crisis escalation, regional security, trade and interdependence, international norms, collective security, military strategy, Palestinian attitudes, intervention, and early warning systems. As one specific example of what could be done with the updated data that could not be done with the existing set, many hypotheses derived from Huntington?s "clash of civilizations" argument focus on the period since 1991; currently we are not able to reach strong conclusions about the empirical validity of those hypotheses. Another value of the MID data set pertains to the derivative data sets for which it provides the basis. For example, the dyadic version of the MID set permits researchers to consider the interactions of particular pairs of countries. Other examples include the Behavioral Correlates of War (BCOW) data set and the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project, which is collecting systematic data on contentious issues in world politics. Overall, a wide array of researchers not only depends on the MID data set for direct use in their own research, but scholars also make use of the data to construct other valuable data sets.