This data collection describes international and civil wars for the years 1816-1992. Part 1, the International Wars file, describes the experience of each interstate member in each war. The unit of analysis is the participant in a particular conflict. When and where each interstate member fought is coded, along with battle and total deaths, pre-war population and armed forces, and whether the member in question initiated the conflict. Each war is characterized as interstate, colonial, or imperial, and major power status and/or central system membership of the warring parties is noted. Part 2, the Civil Wars file, describes when and where fighting took place, whether the war was fought within the boundaries of a major power or central system member, whether there was outside intervention and, if so, whether the intervening state was a major power, on what side they intervened, who won the war, number of battle deaths, total population, and total number of pre-war armed forces.

A survey released in April 2024 found that roughly ** percent of Americans thought it was likely or very likely that there would be another Civil War in their lifetime. Around ** percent of surveyed Americans thought it very unlikely that there would be another Civil War in their lifetime.

These data were collected to study the trends and changes in the frequency, magnitude, severity, and intensity of international wars, civil wars, and international disputes. The data collection consists of two separate datasets. For each dataset, the unit of analysis is the participant in a particular conflict. While the two datasets are related, they are mutually exclusive in that each describes a particular type of war (interstate or civil) or a dispute. Part 1, Experience of Each Interstate System Member in Each War, provides information on each member's experience in each war. To be considered a nation participant, certain minimal criteria of population and diplomatic recognition were used. Qualifying nation participants are classified as to whether they were members of the European central system at the time of the war and, therefore, active and influential in European diplomacy. The geographical location of the war is coded as well as the severity of the war, as determined by its duration and the number of deaths resulting from battle. The pre-war population of each nation participant is also coded. Part 2, Major Civil Wars Between 1816 and 1980, is a study of 106 major civil wars involving 139 participants between 1816 and 1980. An internal war is classified as a major civil war if (1) military action was involved, (2) the national government at the time was actively involved, (3) effective resistance (as measured by the ratio of fatalities of the weaker to the stronger forces) occurred on both sides, and (4) at least 1,000 battle deaths resulted during the civil war. The geographical area in which the war was fought is also coded as well as whether nations outside the civil war actively and overtly participated on one side or the other. The duration, beginning, and ending dates of the civil war, and the pre-war population and number in the armed forces of each participant, are also included. (Source: downloaded from ICPSR 7/13/10)

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at ICPSR -- https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09905.v1. We highly recommend using the ICPSR version as they made this dataset available in multiple data formats and for additional years of data,

A monthly dataset covering civil wars on the African continent from 1997-2012. Variables of interest include civilian targeting and battlefield outcomes (both from ACLED) during civil was as defined by the UCDP/PRIO dyadic armed conflict data. Used to test whether one-sided violence tends to follow battlefield victories or defeats.

American Civil War Battle Data

This graph shows the total number of soldiers who were enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War, between 1861 and 1865. The total population of the Union states was 18.9 million in 1860, and the Confederate states in the south had a population of 8.6 million. The Border States, who primarily supported the Union but sent troops to both sides, had a population of 3.5 million. From the graph we can see that over the course of the war a total of 2.1 million men enlisted for the Union Army, and 1.1 million enlisted for the Confederate Army. The Union Army had roughly double the number of soldiers of the Confederacy, and although the Confederacy won more major battles than the Union in the early stages of the war, the strength of numbers in the Union forces was a decisive factor in their overall victory as the war progressed.

Governments often fight multiple conflicts simultaneously and each conflict can have multiple groups. Prior research on civil war termination has been conducted at the conflict-level, where all the groups in one civil war have been terminated, or at the dyadic-level, where group terminations are examined separately. In practice conflict-level studies mostly tell us how to preserve peace once a civil war has already ended, while dyadic studies tell us about the durability of specific group terminations within a civil war. Hence our understanding of how ongoing civil wars are ended is limited, particularly, with respect to multiparty conflicts. We put forth a systems-approach that treats dyadic terminations as connected processes where group terminations influence the future behavior of other groups, incentivizing a system towards greater aggregate peace or conflict. Analyzing 264 dyadic terminations, the findings suggest that the most effective strategy for governments to reduce systemic conflict is to demonstrate to other groups that they have the political will and capacity to implement security, political and social reforms as part of a peace process. Viable implementation can be followed by the concomitant use of military victories against remaining groups with great success. However, military victories achieved in isolation are ineffective.

Governments often fight multiple civil conflicts simultaneously and each conflict can have multiple groups. Prior research on civil war termination and recurrence has been conducted at either the conflict level, once all the groups have been terminated, or the dyadic level, which examines group terminations in a conflict separately as more or less independent processes. Hence, conflict-level studies mostly tell us how to preserve peace once a civil war has already ended, while dyadic studies mostly tell us about the durability of specific group-level terminations within the larger process that led to that ending. As a result, our understanding of how ongoing civil wars are brought to a close is limited, particularly, with respect to multiparty conflicts. In this study, we put forth a systems approach that treats dyadic terminations as connected processes where group terminations influence the future behavior of other groups, incentivizing the system toward greater aggregate peace or conflict. Analyzing 264 dyadic terminations, the findings suggest that the most effective strategy for governments to reduce systemic conflict is to demonstrate to other groups that they have the political will and capacity to implement security, political, and social reforms as part of a larger reform-oriented peace process. Viable implementation can be followed by the concomitant use of military victories against remaining groups with great success. However, military victories achieved in isolation, that is, outside of a reform-process, do not reduce future levels of conflict even if they themselves are durable.

Previous work has suggested that civil wars can increase the risk of militarized interstate conflict. This research note examines the severity of different suggested linkages between civil war and international conflict using data from 1946 to 2001. The results show that instances of direct intervention and interstate coercion are associated with more severe interstate disputes, comparable in magnitude to the severity of territorial disputes. By contrast, disputes that entail pursuit of rebels across international borders, efforts to deter externalization and spillover events tend to have lower severity. The results underscore the important potential role of internal war for interstate conflicts as well as what types of conflict linkages seem to go together with more severe disputes.

Why do civil wars reoccur? Some scholars emphasize the role of post-war factors, while others locate the causes of civil war recurrence in the dynamics of the conflicts themselves. We build a theory that bridges these arguments by focusing on mass killing. We argue that government mass killing during war reduces opportunities for the opposition to return to military conflict in the future. This allows for longer periods of post-conflict peace. However, government atrocities that begin after the end of a civil war create new grievances without diminishing the ability of opponents to fight. This makes a faster return to conflict more likely. Statistical analysis of all civil wars between 1946 and 2006 strongly supports our arguments, even when we account for selection effects regarding when governments are more likely to engage in mass killing. These results reveal that both during-war and post-war tactics influence civil war recurrence, but that the same tactic can produce different effects depending on the timing of its use.

Previous research concerning the relationship between conflict and public health finds that countries emerging from war face greater challenges in ensuring the well-being of their populations in comparison with states that have enjoyed political stability. This study seeks to extend this insight by considering how different civil war conflict strategies influence post-conflict public health. Drawing a distinction between deaths attributable to battle and those fatalities resulting from genocide/politicide, we find that the magnitude of genocide/politicide proves the more effective and consistent predictor of future rates of disability and death in the aftermath of civil war. The implications of this research are twofold. First, it lends support to an emerging literature suggesting that important distinctions exist between the forms of violence occurring during civil war. Second, of particular interest to policymakers, it identifies post-civil war states that have experienced the highest rates of genocide/politicide as the countries most in need of assistance in the aftermath of conflict.

Dataset and replication code for all analyses in article as published in JCR.

In most contemporary civil wars, governments collude with non-state militias as part of their counterinsurgent strategy. However, governments also restrict the capabilities of their militia allies despite the adverse consequences this may have on their overall counterinsurgent capabilities. Why do governments contain their militia allies while also fighting a rebellion? I argue that variation in militia containment during a civil war is the outcome of a bargaining process over future bargaining power between security or profit-seeking militias and states with time-inconsistent preferences. Strong states and states facing weak rebellions cannot credibly commit to not suppressing their militias, and militias with sufficient capabilities to act independently cannot credibly commit to not betraying the state. States with limited political reach and those facing strong rebellions, however, must retain militia support, which opens a “window of opportunity” for militias to augment their independent capabilities and future bargaining power. Using new data on pro-government militia containment and case illustrations of the Janjaweed in Sudan and Civil Defense Patrols in Guatemala, I find evidence consistent with these claims. Future work must continue to incorporate the agency of militias when studying armed politics, since these bargaining interactions constitute a fundamental yet undertheorized characteristic of war-torn states.

Miscellaneous financial and economic datasets from the period around the U.S. Civil War gathered from a variety of sources.

Existing research on civil war interventions provides contradicting evidence about the role that the media plays in affecting the likelihood of intervention. To date, studies often focus on specific cases (frequently by the United States) leaving it unclear whether the media'™s influence extends more broadly. In this article we examine this question cross-nationally and argue that we need to account for the possibility that interventions also lead to increases in media coverage. We test our hypotheses using cross-national data on civil war interventions and media coverage. These data include a new measure of media coverage of 73 countries experiencing civil wars between 1982 and 1999. These data allow us to determine whether media coverage is more likely to drive leaders'™ decisions or follow them. Toward this end we employ a two-stage conditional maximum likelihood model to control for potential endogeneity between media attention and interventions. The results suggest a reciprocal positive relationship between media attention and civil conflict interventions. Specifically, an increase of one standard deviation in media coverage raises the probability of intervention 68%.

These data contain daily and sub-daily coded data on historical civil wars. The data are interval. The date, day, action type, location, each sides' action, captures, injuries and deaths are shown, and there is a description of each event with the identification of the original source, which in these data is typically a history book.

Dataset outlining the changes in factional strength (combatants under arms), based on the 21st Progress Report of the Secretary-General on UNOMIL, S/1997/90.

Enclosed are all the replication material for the APSR manuscript "Civilian Protest in Civil War: Insights from Côte d'Ivoire." This includes the README.rtf describing each of the files.

Dataset on inequality and civil war

While existing studies highlight features of violence in conventional civil wars, they overlook how war technology is linked to the tactics of armed forces. To shed light on the understudied phenomenon of semi- technologized regular forces in a civil war, this article explores why and how violence is executed by such forces. To do so, we examine patterns of violence in the Boshin War that took place in Japan between 1868 and 1869. Our analyses of novel geocoded event data demonstrate that violent incidents occurred in strategically important locations but in ways that differed from conventional and guerrilla wars. Armed forces were unable to operate as technologically sophisticated forces do in modern conventional civil war due to limited logistics capabilities. Avoiding encounters in less accessible areas, the forces tended to fight in and contest areas that allowed them to establish relationships with local civilians. Additionally, violence against civilians was more likely to occur on the front lines where armed forces and civilians interacted because the former relied on the latter to convey provisions, arms, and ammunition. Unlike in conventional civil wars, military battles and one- sided violence were not unrelated to each other. With these findings, we address temporal, regional, and typological biases in civil war studies.