War Ledger Data, 1870-1974 (ICPSR 9000)

Principal Investigator(s): Organski, A.F.K.; Kugler, Jacek

Summary: This study examines the relationship between national power and war. In the first dataset, the conditions preceding the outbreak of war are examined. In particular, the links between national growth and the onset of war are addressed. The second dataset contains variables which measure national capabilities and estimate political capacities. The third dataset relates to the consequences of war in terms of national power and growth. The final two datasets concern nuclear deterrence: the fourth da... (more info)

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Organski, A.F.K., and Jacek Kugler. War Ledger Data, 1870-1974. ICPSR09000-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011-07-26. doi:10.3886/ICPSR09000.v2

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09000.v2

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Summary:   This study examines the relationship between national power and war. In the first dataset, the conditions preceding the outbreak of war are examined. In particular, the links between national growth and the onset of war are addressed. The second dataset contains variables which measure national capabilities and estimate political capacities. The third dataset relates to the consequences of war in terms of national power and growth. The final two datasets concern nuclear deterrence: the fourth dataset contains crisis data to test whether deterrence works, and the last dataset contains information on U.S. and U.S.S.R. defense expenditures in order to establish if the two major nuclear powers are in a nuclear arms race.

Subject Terms:   arms race, armaments, armed conflict, armed forces, defense expenditures, economic conditions, Gross National Product, international affairs SUBJECT.TERM = international conflict, military affairs, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, war

Geographic Coverage:   Global

Time Period:  

• 1870--1974

Universe:   Part 1: International conflicts in which major powers actively participated. Part 2: All nations involved in international conflict. Part 3: Nations involved in World Wars I and II. Part 4: All crisis events from 1945-1974. Part 5: U.S. and U.S.S.R. defense spending and resources 1945-1978.

Data Types:   aggregate data

Sample:   Part 1: Conflicts where major powers actively participated, or major powers made all-out effort to win conflict, or where there was a potential loss of territory or population. This includes the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 and World Wars I and II. Part 2: All nations involved in conflict where data was available for the relevant time frame. Part 3: Nations involved in World Wars I and II. Part 4: All crisis events from 1945-1974 and the nations involved in them. Part 5: U.S. and U.S.S.R. defense spending and resources, 1945-1978.

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Original ICPSR Release:  1986-04-28

Version History:

• 2011-08-12 Documentation has been updated.
• 2011-07-26 SAS, SPSS, and Stata setups have been added to this data collection.
• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 6 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

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