Measuring Alliances: the Correlates of War Formal Interstate Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343304041061 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | Douglas M. Gibler,Meredith Reid Sarkees |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Journal Article |
211
Development of the Dataset
In 1966, J. David Singer and Melvin Small
released the first dataset on international
alliances. This release, along with the release
of an expanded dataset three years later, estab-
lished detailed coding criteria upon which all
Correlates of War formal international
© 2004 Journal of Peace Research,
vol. 41, no. 2, 2004, pp. 211–222
Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/0022343304041061 ISSN 0022-3433
Measuring Alliances: The Correlates of War
Formal Interstate Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000*
DOUGLAS M. GIBLER
Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky
MEREDITH REID SARKEES
Center for Women’s InterCultural Leadership, Saint Mary’s College
This article serves as a companion to the release of Version 3.0 of the Correlates of War Formal Inter-
state Alliance Dataset, 1816–2000. First released in 1966, the Correlates of War alliance data have
greatly influenced quantitative studies of conflict, providing an important variable in the study of inter-
national conflict and cooperation. The article begins by describing the historical development and the
major characteristics of the alliance dataset. The second section then discusses the procedures used to
both identify and code each alliance in this revised and extended version of the data, and this is
followed by a description of several important changes made to the original coding rules in order to
develop this dataset, with the most notable of these changes being a more determined reliance on treaty
texts rather than historical accounts for identification of alliances and alliance types. To show the effects
of the revised coding decisions and the enlarged temporal domain, the final section of the article pre-
sents summary statistics for the new data and then uses the dataset to revisit two existing studies on
democracy and alliance behavior. The findings indicate that jointly democratic dyads are likely to be
allied only after 1945; joint democracy is negatively related to alliance formation during the 1816–1944
time period.
* Thanks to Scott Bennett, Danette Brickman, John Cotter,
Harry Fogler, Eugene Gholz, Russ Hubbard, Neel Natara-
jan, Ashley Leeds, Karen Mingst, Glenn Palmer, Jeffrey
Ritter, Melvin Small, J. David Singer, John Vasquez, and
especially the late Stuart Bremer. Thanks also to Nils Petter
Gleditsch, Glenn Martin, and several anonymous reviewers
for very helpful comments and suggestions on earlier
versions of the manuscript. Thanks to Brian Lai and Dan
Reiter for sharing their data, and thanks especially to Ashley
Leeds for making her data publicly available at
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~leeds/atop.html. The Depart-
ments of Political Science at the University of Kentucky and
the Pennsylvania State University provided institutional
support for the project. The alliance dataset can be found at
the following website: http://cow2.polisci.psu.edu/
COW2%20Data/Alliances/alliance.htm. Also included on
SPECIAL
DATA
FEATURE
this page is a dyadic version of the formal interstate alliance
dataset developed by Scott Bennett. Researchers with specific
questions regarding individual alliances are encouraged to
consult the frequently asked questions (FAQ) page that has
been added to the web release of the dataset or Gibler (forth-
coming). The latter provides full text and individual historical
summaries for each alliance in this dataset and the Gibler
(1999) alliance data. Interested readers should also consult
three appendices to this article available at
http://www.uky.edu/~dgibler/replication.htm. Web Appendix
I includes the signature dates and sources for each alliance,
while Web Appendices II and III detail the data and models
used to construct Table II. Please cite this article when using
data from Version 3.0 of the Correlates of War Formal Inter-
state Alliance Dataset. Data users are encouraged to report any
errors to the author at dgibler@uky.edu.
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