International Event-Data Developments

The scientific study of international events has been revolutionized. Writers have long viewed such phenomena as war and peace, conflict and cooperation, as sequences of events-demarches, protests, treaties, crises, armed interventions, conferences, and other occurrences that stand out against the gray background of everyday living. New thinking, however, has given us a more systematic means of analyzing the occurrence of events and of understanding and even predicting the international processes they influence. This book offers insight into the current exploration of a modern and sophisticated analytic and methodological approach to the study of interactions among nation-states, ethnic groups, and other international actors. National Science Foundation support brought together key event-data researchers in Data Development for International Research (DDIR) to assess needs and consider alternative approaches. DDIR has sought to advance the quantitative analysis of international politics. In Phase I it updated, expanded, and developed new national attribute and international conflict data. DDIR Phase II, represented in this book, has two main goals: to systematically enhance and improve currently existing, high-quality event data sets and to develop computer software that can facilitate the future generation of such event data and make data sets more readily accessible to users.