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These contain an abbreviated version of the "master records" for the Correlates of War direct contiguity data. Data contain a few cosmetic changes to assist with some functions downstream from it.

Usage

cow_contdir

Format

A data frame with 1,874 observations on the following 5 variables.

ccode1

a numeric vector for the Correlates of War state code for the first state

ccode2

a numeric vector for the Correlates of War state code for the second state

conttype

a numeric vector for the contiguity relationship

stdate

a date communicating the start of the contiguity relationship

enddate

a date communicating the end of the contiguity relationship

Details

The "master record" provided by the Correlates of War is "non-directed." I make these data "directed" for convenience.

For clarity, the contiguity codes range from 1 to 5. 1 = direct land contiguity. 2 = separated by 12 miles of water or fewer (a la Stannis Baratheon). 3 = separated by 24 miles of water or fewer (but more than 12 miles). 4 = separated by 150 miles of water or fewer (but more than 24 miles). 5 = separated by 400 miles of water or fewer (but more than 150 miles). Cases of separation by more than 400 miles of water are here as 0. The documentation for add_contiguity() belabors why you should not consider the contiguity variable as ordinal.

stdate and enddate are simple date formats of the original begin and end columns in the raw data. Correlates of War communicates contiguity periods in a basic year-month format (YYYYMM). It's just easier to process an actual date, provided you're careful and know that the day I communicate in these columns means absolutely nothing.

The master record contains no entry for a non-continguous relationship, leaving the user to figure that out for themselves. The data I provide here includes information for non-contiguous relationships for all states that had, at least at one point, a contiguous relationship. For example, there is just the one entry a contiguous USA-Russia relationship (from Jan. 1959 to the end of the data), but I also provide manual clarification of a non-contiguous relationship before that. You can check the data-raw directory for how I do this. This is necessary for a case like Myanmar-Philippines, in which a contiguity relationship enters the data in 1963 (but only for September of that year). It would be important to note that the data say there was no contiguity relationship in that dyad at the start of the year.

Be mindful that the data are fundamentally year-month. Sometimes the end date for one contiguity relationship overlaps with the start date for another contiguity relationship. Sometimes it doesn't. Since no day information is available in the data, the contiguity entries I impute for non-contiguous relationships cannot know whether, for example, the contiguity relationship that starts in Jan. 1959 started on the first of the month or sometime in the middle of the month.

References

Stinnett, Douglas M., Jaroslav Tir, Philip Schafer, Paul F. Diehl, and Charles Gochman (2002). "The Correlates of War Project Direct Contiguity Data, Version 3." Conflict Management and Peace Science 19 (2):58-66.