This page will soon be moved to a separate ICOW.org site, rather than being part of PaulHensel.org. It will also be reorganized, with a separate page for each ICOW data set (like I have started doing with MTOPS) and with icoworg.html being replaced by people.html.
Project Description
The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project is a research project that is attempting to collect systematic data on contentious issues in world politics. More detail on the project's goals and theoretical underpinnings may be found in the papers generated by the project.
Project Participants and Funding
The ICOW project was started by Dr. Paul R. Hensel, then at the Political Science department at Florida State University and now at the University of North Texas. Dr. Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, then also at Florida State University and now at the University of Iowa, joined the project several years later as co-director.
Beyond Paul and Sara, a number of other researchers have worked on ICOW data sets. Some worked as volunteers or as part-time workers for a few summer hours or as a research assistant for a single semester, while others -- most notably Allison, Brochmann, Sowers, and Tures -- have spent substantial amounts of time working for the project over several years:
- Territorial Claims: Mike Allison, Cherie Bryant, Glynn Ellis, Taylor Fravel, Bryan Frederick, Kim Genger, Ed Hally, Danny Hill, Baris Ornarli, Shawn Rowan, Jackie Rubin, Bill Reed, Steve Shellman, Cliff Sherrill, Tom Sowers, Ashly Townsen, and John Tures
- Maritime Claims: Mike Allison, Christina Fattore, Ed Hally, Jared Hurvitz, Ahmed Khanani, Matthew Stinson, Clayton Thyne, Kristin Stewart, and Tom Wallace
- River Claims: Patrick Armshaw, Marit Brochmann, Glynn Ellis, Jen Kruse, Sunhee Park, Tom Sowers, and Everett Young
- John Tures has also worked on developing a regime claims data set on his own.
Funding for the territorial claims data (in the form of research assistants) has generally been provided by the political science departments at Florida State, Iowa, and North Texas. Paul Hensel received a small Summer 1999 grant from FSU'S Committee on Faculty Research Support (COFRS) to cover initial research on river claims. He and Sara Mitchell received a 2001 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant and a 2002-2004 NSF grant to cover data collection on territorial, river, and maritime claims. He also received a relatively small 2008 grant from the Northeast Asian History Foundation (in Seoul) for work related to territorial claims.
Disclaimer: The Project's Name
J. David Singer of the University of Michigan was kind enough to allow the use of the name "Correlates of War" in the ICOW project's name when the project first began in the late 1990s. It should be noted that Singer, the Correlates of War project, and the University of Michigan, Penn State University, and University of Illinois (all of which have hosted COW at some point in time) bear no responsibility for any decisions or errors that might be made by the ICOW project; such responsibility lies entirely with Paul Hensel, Sara Mitchell, and their co-authors and research assistants associated with the ICOW project.
Disclaimer: Endorsement of Specific Claims
The project's co-directors wish to emphasize that neither the ICOW project nor its participants take or endorse any official positions with respect to any of the claims in our data set. We are attempting to identify cases where nation-states have disagreed over specific issues in the modern era, as well as measuring what made those issues valuable to them and studying how they chose to manage or settle those issues. We have no interest in promoting or supporting any specific position on any of these claims, and we instruct our research assistants to make sure that any personal opinions they might have do not affect their research or coding.
It is also important to emphasize that the ICOW project's research and coding of individual cases is not influenced in any way by the views or opinions of any funding agencies or other organizations or institutions. Most of the research assistants who have worked on the project over the years have been paid for by the departments where the project's co-directors have been employed, which have no political agenda with respect to any of the cases in the ICOW data, but we have also received several external grants to assist in data collection. In no case have the sources of those grants made any effort to dictate how we should code any of the cases in our data set, or for that matter whether certain cases should or should not even be included in the data. Furthermore, even if a funding agency were to seek to influence our coding decisions, we would not comply; our purpose here is to provide an impartial compilation of data on territorial, river, and maritime claims, not to support any country's views on any specific claim(s).
Issues Data Sets
Data Set Requirements
Because one of the ICOW project's primary goals is the generation of systematic data on a variety of different types of issues dividing nation-states, the project will eventually produce numerous data sets that are fully compatible with each other. That is, each ICOW data set will follow the same format, contain the same type of variables, and contain data on contention over comparable types of issues.
The first (and most important) requirement for each ICOW data set is explicit evidence of contention involving official representatives of two or more nation-states over some type of issue. In the case of the ICOW territorial claims data, this means evidence that official representatives of at least one state make explicit statements claiming sovereignty over a piece of territory that is claimed or administered by another state. Claims that are not made explicitly, are not made by official representatives of at least one state government, or do not involve at least one nation-state on each side of the claim are beyond the scope of the present data set.
Second, each ICOW data set must be collectable without reference to the occurrence of militarized conflict over the issue in question. Most existing social science data sets that involve disputed issues begin by identifying cases of militarized conflict (disputes, crises, or wars) and then code the issues involved in each confrontation. One of the most important contributions of the ICOW project, though, lies in the ability to test propositions on the propensity of different issue types to lead to militarized conflict, which can not be done if the data collection only includes issues that actually lead to such conflict. The ICOW territorial claims data set thus includes all identifiable cases where two or more states are involved in a claim over territory -- regardless of whether or not this claim eventually led to militarized conflict.
A third requirement for each ICOW data set is that data must be collectable on some type of measure of issue salience. That is, scholars using the data set must have some way to distinguish between claims of higher and lower salience. The ICOW territorial claims data set offers numerous variables that may be used to distinguish claims by issue salience, including the area and population of the claimed territory, the existence of resource, ethnic, or religious bases for the claim, and whether the claim involves mainland or offshore territory, homeland or colony/possession territory, and all of the target state, part of the target state, or merely the precise location of the border.
Finally, each issue covered by the ICOW project must be amenable to data collection on attempts to manage the issue(s) in question. Another important contribution of the ICOW data is the ability to test propositions on the ways that states attempt to manage or settle their disagreements over different types of issues. For the ICOW territorial claims data, this includes all attempts to settle a territorial claim through bilateral negotiations or through third party assistance (such as mediation, arbitration, or adjudication).
Territorial Claims
A territorial claim is defined as explicit contention between two or more nation-states claiming sovereignty over a specific piece of territory. Official government representatives (i.e., individuals who are authorized to make or state foreign policy positions for their governments) must make explicit statements claiming sovereignty over the same territory. While most scholars have focused on the conflictual dimension of territory, as with research noting that territory has been involved in more armed conflict than any other issue or that armed conflicts over territory are more likely than those over other issues to escalate to full-scale war, only around half of the territorial claims that we have identified have led to even a single militarized dispute; peaceful techniques such as negotiation or mediation are much more common.
Current Status: Territorial claims data collection has been collected for the Western Hemisphere and Northern/Western Europe for the years 1816-2001, and the resulting data set is available for download. Data collection on the Middle East is finally approaching completion, and should be released sometime during Summer 2009. Preliminary research has already been conducted for many claims in the rest of the world, although much more work remains to be done with more detailed sources for claims in each of these regions. Detailed work has already begun on Eastern Europe, which will be the next to be completed after the Middle East; we are currently examining about 80 potential claims in that region. Africa, Asia, and Oceania are not as far along yet; we are currently aware of around 120 potential claims in Africa and around 100 in Asia and Oceania.
| Region | Territorial Claims Data Status |
| Western Hemisphere | Data collection completed (1816-2001) |
| Europe | Western Europe: Data collection completed (1816-2001); Eastern Europe: Research currently underway |
| Africa | |
| Middle East | Research currently underway |
| Asia and Oceania |
River Claims
A river claim is defined as explicit contention between two or more nation-states over the use or abuse of a specific river (or river system). Official government representatives (i.e., individuals who are authorized to make or state foreign policy positions for their governments) must make explicit statements contesting the usage of that river, typically involving concerns of water quality (e.g. pollution), water quantity (e.g. dams or diversion of water for irrigation), or navigation along the river. While the notion of "water wars" has captured the attention of many observers, whether journalists, scholars, or policymakers, we have found that armed conflict over rivers has been quite rare (particularly in comparison to territorial and maritime issues) and that even in situations of explicit disagreement over the use of a river both sides tend to manage their differences through peaceful techniques.
Current Status: We have finished data collection for three the Western Hemisphere, Northern and Western Europe, and the Middle East for the years 1900-2001, and the resulting data set is available for download. Data collection for the rest of the world is currently underway, beginning with Eastern Europe (where we have identified 17 claims, which will be coded by early summer of 2009), followed by Asia/Oceania and Africa. Paul Hensel and Marit Brochmann are planning to finish the remaining regions of the world during the summer of 2009 as part of a book project investigating the origin and management of river claims.
| Region | River Claims Data Status |
| Western Hemisphere | Data collection completed (1900-2001) |
| Europe | Western Europe: Data collection completed (1900-2001); Eastern Europe: Research currently underway |
| Africa | Research currently underway |
| Middle East | Data collection completed (1900-2001) |
| Asia and Oceania | Research currently underway |
Maritime Claims
A maritime claim is defined as explicit contention between two or more nation-states over the use of a specific maritime zone. Official government representatives (i.e., individuals who are authorized to make or state foreign policy positions for their governments) must make explicit statements contesting the usage of that maritime zone, typically for matters like fishing or navigation. We have found that maritime issues lie between territorial and river issues in the propensity to produce armed conflict, but the like the other two issues, peaceful management techniques are employed much more frequently.
Current Status: We have finished data collection for the Western Hemisphere and Europe for the years 1900-2001, and the resulting data set is available for download. Work is underway for the rest of the world, with current efforts focusing on the Middle East before moving on to Asia/Oceania and Africa.
| Region | Maritime Claims Data Status |
| Western Hemisphere | Data collection completed (1900-2001) |
| Europe | Data collection completed (1900-2001) |
| Africa | |
| Middle East | Research currently underway |
| Asia and Oceania |
Regime Claims
John Tures, a Florida State Ph.D. (and former ICOW research assistant while at FSU) currently working at LaGrange College in Georgia, collected preliminary data on regime-based claims in the Western Hemisphere for his dissertation. This data set includes data on explicit statements by one or more states seeking to remove the specific leader or entire political system of at least one other state, as well as details of each claim such as characteristics of the claim's initiator and target and the relationship between their states. The data set is currently limited to regime claims involving Latin American regimes (although the challenger may come from outside of the region), although John eventually plans to extend this data collection to the remainder of the world. Any questions about this data set should be directed to John Tures.
A current version of the codebook is available for the ICOW regime claims data set, in Adobe Acrobat [PDF] format. The official list of Western Hemisphere regime claims is also available, with information identifying each claim such as the challenger and target state, name of the targeted leader, and the beginning and ending date of each claim; additional variables that can be used to measure claim salience will be made available at a later date.
Possible Plans for Future Data Collection
Data on the initial issue data sets -- territorial, river, and maritime claims -- will be released publicly (through this web page) as it is completed (usually whenever any of the three data sets has been extended by the completion of another geographic region of data coverage). Upon completion and release of these initial three issues, the project may move on to collecting additional data sets involving different types of contentious issues between nation-states, as well as trying to keep the initial data sets updated.
The most likely direction for future work would involve the collection of data on (ethnic, linguistic, religious, or other) identity-based claims, where the subject of the claim is a disagreement over the status or treatment of the identity group. Examples of such issues include Austrian demands over Italy's treatment of ethnic Germans in South Tyrol or Russia's demands over the treatment of ethnic Russians in the post-Soviet successor states; most issues of this type do not involve demands for territorial sovereignty over the area where the identity group lives, so this would be largely distinct from the current territorial claims data set. Another potentially useful direction for future work would involve collection of data on similar types of claims (territorial, river, and/or maritime) between different political units within a single nation-state, such as U.S. states; this would allow a comparison of how the management of (say) territorial issues is different when there is a Leviathan above the claimants, as opposed to international anarchy above nation-states. It must be emphasized that these are only ideas for possible future work, though; we make no guarantee that we will collect data on these or any other issues beyond the first three.
Supplementary Data Sets
Beyond the issues data sets described above, the ICOW Project has also collected several supplementary data sets to help in subsequent data collection and analysis. While nor directly involving issues, these data sets are important for testing various issue-related hypotheses (involving the impact of the regional or global institutional context, for example) and for collecting data using historical reference sources that may refer to states or other entities by non-current names.
Historical State Names
The ICOW historical state names data set includes alternative names (or alternative spellings of names) for each nation-state in the COW interstate system. The primary purpose of this data set is to assist data coders (or other researchers using historical sources), who can often be confused by references to entity names that no longer exist or are no longer used (leading to a risk of ignored or miscoded data). The data set attempts to list all relatively common alternative names that have been used to refer to each state over the past two centuries, so that the researcher can determine easily that "New Granada" actually refers to Colombia rather than risking data loss or errors. This data set is now publicly available in the ICOW data archive.
Multilateral Treaties of Pacific Settlement
The ICOW multilateral treaties of pacific settlement data set includes signature and ratification status for all regional and global treaties that explicitly call for the pacific settlement of (political) disputes among their members. This data set is expected to be used primarily to test the proposition that the regional or global institutional context -- as indicated by joint membership in such an organization -- should affect states' choices of actions in attempting to settle their territorial, river, maritime, or other issues. Over thirty regional and global treaties and organizations are included in the current version of this data set; more details on each organization's charter are provided in the codebook and documentation. This data set is now publicly available in the ICOW data archive.
Colonial History
The ICOW colonial history data set attempts to identify colonial or other dependency relationships for each state over the past two centuries. This includes states that have ruled each state as a colony, dependency, League of Nations mandate, UN trust territory, or other type of possession, as well as states that have seceded from existing states and states that have merged into existing states. This should be most useful for analyses of a variety of possible propositions on the general impact of colonial rule on subsequent relations between the former colonizer and the former dependency, the impact of different countries' colonial policies on post-independence events (involving the former dependency and either internal problems or external relations with the former colonizer or with other states), and similar topics. It may also be useful in identifying cases for certain types of analysis (or perhaps "relevant dyads"), if former colonial powers are thought to have an interest in their former dependencies and their surroundings. This data set is now publicly available in the ICOW data archive.
ICOW-Related Papers
All of these papers may be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.
Publications
Multiple Issue Types
Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Thomas E. Sowers II, and Clayton L. Thyne, "Bones of Contention: Comparing Territorial, Maritime, and River Issues." Journal of Conflict Resolution 2008, 1 (February), forthcoming.
- See also this paper's Web appendix (PDF format) and replication data (.zip archive with STATA data and do-file)
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Paul R. Hensel, "International Institutions and Compliance with Agreements." American Journal of Political Science 2007.
- See also this paper's Web appendix
Territorial Claims
Paul R. Hensel, Michael Allison, and Ahmed Khanani (2009). "Territorial Integrity Treaties and Armed Conflict over Territory." Conflict Management and Peace Science, forthcoming.
- See also this paper's Internet Appendix.
Hensel, Paul R., and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, "Issue Indivisibility and Territorial Claims." GeoJournal 64, 4 (December 2005): 275-285.
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (2002), "A Kantian System? Democracy and Third Party Conflict Resolution." American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming.
Paul R. Hensel, "Contentious Issues and World Politics: The Management of Territorial Claims in the Americas, 1816-1992." International Studies Quarterly 45, 1 (March 2001): 81-109.
Paul R. Hensel, "Territory: Theory and Evidence on Geography and Conflict." In John A. Vasquez, ed., What Do We Know about War?. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, pp. 57-84.
River Claims
Marit Brochmann and Paul R. Hensel (2009). "Peaceful Management of International River Claims." International Negotiation, forthcoming.
Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Thomas E. Sowers II, "Conflict Management of Riparian Disputes: A Regional Comparison of Dispute Resolution." Political Geography 25, 4 (May 2006): 383-411.
Maritime Claims
(none so far)
Working Papers
Multiple Issue Types
Elizabeth A. Nyman and Paul R. Hensel, "Implications of Issue Salience for Territorial, Maritime, and River Claims." Paper presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston.
Territorial Claims
Ray Block Jr., Paul R. Hensel, and David A. Siegel, "The Impact of Social Identity on Third-Party Mediation." Submitted to International Studies Quarterly, March 2009.
Paul R. Hensel, Michael Allison, and Ahmed Khanani, "Territorial Integrity Treaties and Armed Conflict over Territory." Submitted to Conflict Management and Peace Science (September 2007); an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006 Shambaugh Conference "Building Synergies: Institutions and Cooperation in World Politics," Iowa City, IA.
Paul R. Hensel, "Territorial Claims and Armed Conflict between Neighbors." Paper presented as a keynote speaker at Lineae Terrarum International Borders Conference, El Paso, TX, March 2006.
Paul R. Hensel, "Starting on the Wrong Foot: Political Independence and Territorial Claims." Paper presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., and the 2006 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, San Diego.
Paul R. Hensel, "Power Politics and Contentious Issues: Realism, Issue Salience, and Conflict Management." Paper presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Honolulu.
Shawn E. Rowan and Paul R. Hensel, "Declining Benefits of Conquest? Economic Development and Territorial Claims in the Americas and Europe." Paper presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Peace Science Society (International), Houston, TX.
Paul R. Hensel, "Militarized Management of Territorial Claims in the Americas, 1816-2001." Paper presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the CEEISA and International Studies Association, Budapest, Hungary. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Portland.
Michael E. Allison and Paul R. Hensel, "Who Cares?: Domestic Politics and the Management of Territorial Claims." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, March 2002.
Paul R. Hensel (1998), "Reliability and Validity Issues in the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Minneapolis.
Paul R. Hensel and John Tures (1997), "International Law and the Settlement of Territorial Claims in Latin America." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.
River Claims
Marit Brochmann and Paul R. Hensel, "The Effectiveness of Negotiations over International River Claims." Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, New York.
Paul R. Hensel and Marit Brochmann, "Armed Conflict over International Rivers: The Onset and Militarization of River Claims." Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Chicago.
Maritime Claims
Stephen C. Nemeth, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Elizabeth A. Nyman, and Paul R. Hensel, "Ruling the Sea: Institutionalization and Privatization of the Global Ocean Commons." Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.
- Submitted to International Organization, March 2008.
Regime Claims
John Tures (1998), "Expanding the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project: Regime-Based Claims, Disputes, and Means of Settlement, 1816-1996." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Minneapolis.
John Tures (1999), "From Coup to Conflict: The Onset and Escalation of Regime Claims in the Western Hemisphere, 1816-1992." Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta.
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Last updated: 21 April 2009
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