Collaborative Research: What Do Leaders Want?: Collecting and Coding Issue Positions and Demands in the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) Data, 1816-2010

这项研究调查了一个在国际冲突研究中持续存在的奇怪悖论。大多数理论从问题上的分歧或跨问题立场来解释国际冲突，但很少有人真正研究导致国家斗争的特定类型的问题。这主要是因为缺乏关于各州争论的问题类型的良好数据。这项工作将通过收集1816年至2010年参与军事化冲突的所有行为者所有突出问题的数据来缓解这一问题。对于争执中的每个问题，小组将在争端开始时为每个行为者编码问题的状态，每个行为者对问题的初始立场，以及这些立场如何随着冲突的持续而变化。这些数据将使政策制定者和学者能够更精确地概括国际冲突的原因和后果，研究最有可能导致冲突的具体问题，以及随着国家展示其战斗能力和意愿，问题立场如何演变。技术摘要国际冲突研究人员知道领土问题容易发生战争，而讨价还价模型为军事化冲突的开始和演变提供了理论路线图。然而，领土冲突学者经常将导致各州打仗的指标与各国为什么打仗的指标混为一谈。与此同时，讨价还价理论丰富的正式模型实际上无法进行测试，因为关于问题头寸的适当数据并不存在。目前军事化的国家间争端(MID)数据集只给我们提供了广泛的汇总衡量标准，没有其他数据集可以记录战斗人员在一段时间内和整个国际系统的问题立场。该项目以该小组以前的项目为基础，收集和分析了军事化的州际争端的来源数据，从而解决了这一问题。该团队将收集、编码和分析问题头寸，并在1816年至2010年的所有纠纷中发布头寸变化数据。产生的相应数据集将提供有关争议各方最初要求的信息，并将记录这些要求在争议持续时间内的演变。这些数据是讨价还价模型假设的核心，这些假设是各国对能力和解决方案的示范做出回应的核心，对于那些认为领土威胁难以解决的人来说，具体问题很重要。这一广泛的编码项目也将为众多研究生和本科生研究人员提供第一手经验。

General AbstractThis research investigates a strange paradox that persists in the study of international conflict. Most theories explain international conflict in terms of differences over issues or across issue positions, but few actually examine the particular types of issues lead states to fight. This is due primarily to the lack of good data on the types of issues over which states contend. This work will alleviate this problem by collecting data on all salient issues for all actors involved in militarized conflicts from 1816 to 2010. For each issue in contention the team will code the status of the issue at the beginning of the dispute for each actor, each actor's initial position on the issue, and how those positions change as the conflict persists. The data will provide policymakers and scholars the ability to generalize about the causes and consequences of international conflict with a greater level of precision, examining the specific issues most likely to lead to conflict and how issue positions evolve as states demonstrate their capabilities and willingness to fight.Technical AbstractInternational conflict scholars know territorial issues are war-prone while bargaining models provide a theoretical roadmap to the onset and evolution of militarized conflict. However, territorial conflict scholarship routinely conflates indicators over what leads states fight with indicators of why states are fighting. Meanwhile, bargaining theory's rich formal models cannot actually be tested because the appropriate data on issue positions does not exist. The current Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) dataset gives us only broad summary measures, and no other data set is available to document issue positions of combatants over time and across the international system. This project addresses this by building on the team's previous projects that gathered and analyzed source data on militarized interstate disputes. The team will collect, code, and analyze issue positions and issue position change data within all disputes from 1816 to 2010. The corresponding data set generate will provide information about initial demands from disputants and will chronicle the evolution of these demands over the duration of the dispute. These data are central for bargaining model assumptions that states respond to demonstrations of capabilities and resolve, and specific issues are important for those arguing threats to territory are difficult to settle. This extensive coding project will also provide firsthand experience for numerous graduate and undergraduate student researchers.