Here, you can access some of the more important datasets available for research in International Relations and Comparative Political Systems. After the listing of datasets, there is a listing of dataset programs. Furthermore, some listing sites are provided at the end. Finally, if nothing here helps, a Google search bar is provided at the very end.
I hope you find this information useful.
The website describes the dataset as follows:
The behavior of various states involved in 45 interstate crises over the past 164 years is the focus of this data collection. More specifically, these data follow the attempts of these states to influence others and the responses generated over the course of the crises. The sample reflects a broad historical range of crises and includes those that involve war as well as those that do not. Each data file contains information on a crisis or set of crises. Within each data file the cases represent actions taken during the crisis period. The data allow for a micro level of analysis with measures that distinguish a wide range of cooperative and conflictive interstate actions. In addition, measures are included that are sensitive to the mix of different behaviors and that record the tempo of the action within given time intervals.
Home: http://community.middlebury.edu/~leng/
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems database includes datasets “focusing on three general themes: The impact of electoral institutions on citizens’ political cognition and behavior (parliamentary versus presidential systems of government, the electoral rules that govern the casting and counting of ballots; and political parties); the nature of political and social cleavages and alignments; and the evaluation of democratic institution and processes.” Thirty-nine country-elections are included in Module 1, and eight in module 2.
Home: http://www.umich.edu/~cses/
The COW Project maintains a series of datasets designed for international relations.
Home: http://www.correlatesofwar.org/
The FUF project was created to determine which country or countries in the militarized interstate disputes were the first to use force in the dispute Until this point, conflicts only coded for the existence of force in a dyad. This dataset codes the direction of that force.
Home: http://www.d.umn.edu/~mcapriol/
Provides freedom scores for all states from 1972 until current. Freedom scores are divided into both political rights and civil liberties. This dataset has been used as a measure of regime liberalism and democracy.
Home: http://www.freedomhouse.org/
This dataset contains the 434 conflicts between 1947 and 2002.
Home: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/icb/
The COW Project maintains a series of datasets designed for international relations. Variables include territorial claims, maritime claims, and multilateral treaties.
Home: http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/icowdata.html
The KOSIMO dataset finds itself on the Heidelberger Institut für Internationale Konfliktforschung (Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict) servers. KOSIMO is the name of a database containing 693 political conflicts from 1945 to 1999. Each conflict is coded with 28 variables.
Home: http://www.hiik.de/kosimo/index.html
Minorities at Risk are those minorities who are singled out by the majority in the state. To merge these datasets with your own datasets, create a unique key (often country code-year works) and use your statistics program's merge function.
Home: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/
These two datasets provide data on all disputes in which force was at least threatened. The first version (2.10) deals with the years 1816 until 1992, whereas the second version (v3.06) extends the dataset until 2002.
Home: http://www.correlatesofwar.org/COW2%20Data/MIDs/MID302.html
The Penn World Tables provide necessary economic information about the states. The dataset lacks in both scope (not all states are measured) and length (the temporal length is brief: 1950-2000).
Home: http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/
These datasets were used in two studies by Steven C. Poe and C. Neal Tate who investigate the violations of human rights to personal integrity in the 1980s. This site holds the datasets for both their 1994 and their 1999 investigations.
Home: http://www.psci.unt.edu/ihrsc/poetate.htm
The Polity datasets chiefly code states as to their level of democracy and autocracy. In the literature, states coded 5 and above on the POLITY scale are considered democracies, while those coded -5 and below are coded autocracies.
Previous versions of the Polity datasets included variables such as CENT (degree of centralization in the government), SCOPE (extent of government power in domestic affairs), and MONO (measure of the degree of monocratism in the executive). All Polity datasets (except for the original) are in country-year format.
The original Polity dataset is in regime format and includes a variable (ANOC) that measures the degree of anocracy in the country.
Home: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/polity/
This dataset contains almost 1700 cold-war conflicts, disputes, and quarrels. As opposed to most datasets on this page, this dataset is in MS Access form, which allows you to merge the parts of the dataset that you want.
Home: http://www.usc.edu/dept/ancntr/Paris-in-LA/Database/sherfacs.html
This program allows the user to combine several provided datasets into country-year, dyad-year, directed dyad-year datasets. It is expandable. To merge these datasets with your own datasets, create a unique key (often country code-year works) and use your statistics program's merge function.
Home: http://www.eugenesoftware.org/
Minorities at Risk are those minorities who are singled out by the majority in the state. To merge these datasets with your own datasets, create a unique key (often country code-year works) and use your statistics program's merge function.
Home: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/
According to the website,
The project has constructed a Global Conflict Database that is accessed on the Internet for free. The database provides information on armed conflicts, trends and peace agreements. It covers all the ordinary UCDP variables but also present some new variables such as conflict onset, conflict endings, secondary support, negotiations and peace agreements. Conflict descriptions and links to relevant documents are also accessible. All armed conflicts, which have met the UCDP criteria, are included.
Home: http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/index.htm
CIDCM hosts several major datasets that are critical to the comparative analysis of conflict. CIDCM projects provide data on such topics as the position of minority populations in states, the status of democratic institutions, and the dynamics of international crises.
The five datasets hosted here are: Armed Conflict and Intervention, International Crisis Behavior, Minorities at Risk, Polity IV, and State Failure.
Home: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/
The Centre for the Study of Civil War is a long-term project dedicated to determining the causes of Civil Wars. In addition to researching the causes, CSCW researches what sustains them and what it takes to end them.
Home: http://www.prio.no/page/CSCW/CSCW_menu_main/9195/9220
This is a great gateway to several articles regarding conflict. Main research areas include: Ethics, Norms and Identities; Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding; Foreign and Security Policies. PRIO also serves as a host for the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW).
Home: http://www.prio.no/
This is a portal for a vast collection of datasets. It can only be accessed from member-university computers, including Creighton.
Home: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/index.html
This site contains several links to external international relations datasets organized by category. It also is the base for the Issues Correlates of War (ICOW) dataset.
Home: http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/data.html
Many datasets are available from this project site. The common theme is peace and conflict studies. Active studies include: armed conflict and conflict management, arms production, export controls, and nuclear arms control and non-proliferation, to name a few.
One of the more exciting projects is the “Internet-based early warning indicators system for preventive policy” (EWI).
Home: http://www.sipri.org/
Several datasets are available here.
Home: http://www.kvasaheim.com/datasets.php