MIDs

Overview

Version 3.0 of the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data collection compiled by the Correlates of War Project provides information about conflicts in which one or more states threaten, display, or use force against one or more other states between 1816 and 2001. Version 2.1 of the MID data set covered the 1816-1992 period. The data collection project that culminated in version 3.0 gathered new data on all MIDs that began between 1993 and 2001, along with those MIDs that began before 1993 but were still ongoing on December 31, 1992.

Version 3.10 (released on September 26, 2007) updates the data set with corrections made after an investigation of over 200 cases where errors or discrepancies had been reported to the COW project between 2003 and 2006. Version 3.10 includes a new version of the dyadic MID data set based on the corrected underlying MID data. Since all currently reported errors and discrepancies have been investigated and either corrected, or the original data judged correct, these official dyadic MID data should be considered to supersede other dyadic MID data sets.

“Militarized interstate disputes are united historical cases of conflict in which the threat, display or use of military force short of war by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, official representatives, official forces, property, or territory of another state. Disputes are composed of incidents that range in intensity from threats to use force to actual combat short of war” (Jones et al. 1996, 163).

Citation 

In any papers or publications that utilize this data set, users are asked to give the version number and cite the article of record for the data set, as follows:

Main Bibliography Entry: Ghosn, Faten, Glenn Palmer, and Stuart Bremer. 2004. "The MID3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description." Conflict Management and Peace Science 21:133-154.

Dyadic Data Set Bibliography Entry: Ghosn, Faten, and Scott Bennett. 2003. Codebook for the Dyadic Militarized Interstate Incident Data, Version 3.10. Online: http://correlatesofwar.org.

MID 2.1 codebook/citation: The codebook for the MID data version 3.0 builds on the documentation for the MID version 2.1 data set, which is available online: Daniel M. Jones, Stuart A. Bremer and J. David Singer. 1996 ."Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816-1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns." Conflict Management and Peace Science 15:163-213.

Data Set 

The files associated with the MID 3.0 data set can be obtained either individually, or in one ZIP file that contains several files. All data files are in .csv (comma-delimited) format. In this format, values are separated by commas, with string values (e.g. state names) in quotations. The first line of each data file is a header record containing the variable names.

MID-level data and documents: