The ICOW Maritime Claims Data Set
The maritime claims data set follows the general guidelines on the ICOW home page.
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.
Please note that the ICOW Project and its directors do not take or endorse official positions on any maritime claims. Our goal is 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. Inclusion/exclusion of specific cases, and coding of details related to those cases, follows strict guidelines presented in the project's codebooks (which are available below).
Measuring Claim Salience
The salience of maritime claims is measured by a 0-12 index, which includes up to six points each for the claim's challenger and target states (one point each for six indicators of salience). For more details see the Hensel, Mitchell, Sowers, and Thyne JCR article listed below in the data set references section of this page.
- Homeland/Dependent Territory: do the maritime borders extend from homeland territory, rather than from a colonial or dependent possession? (listed separately for each claimant)
- Strategic Location: is the maritime zone considered to be a militarily or economically strategic location?
- Fishing: is the maritime zone used for fishing?
- Migratory Fish Stocks: does the claim address migratory fish stocks that travel through the maritime zone?
- Oil: are oil resources known or suspected to exist within the maritime zone?
- Territorial Claim: is the claim related to an ongoing territorial claim (i.e., does it involve maritime areas extending beyond either coastal territory or an island that is part of a current territorial claim)?
Project Participants
- Principal Investigator: Sara Mitchell
- Research Assistants: Mike Allison, Michael Benton, Tristan Brown, Karl Burhop, Kathleen Cordell, Kelly Daniels, Brian Donnelly, Naeda Elliot, Christopher Eubanks, Christina Fattore, Jake Freiburger, Ed Hally, Paul Haufe, Garrett Hilpipre, Jared Hurvitz, Shuai Jin, Neal Johnson, Ahmed Khanani, Derrick Kraus, Samantha Lange, Sojeong Lee, David Lucas, Kate McNulty, Jenna Miller, Adreon Morgan, Mark Nieman, Nick Rushek, Mustafa Samiwala, Kristin Stewart, Matthew Stinson, Joshua Taylor, Clayton Thyne, Eashaan Vajpeyi, Tom Wallace, Christopher Wille, Alp Zora
Current Status
We have released data on maritime claims, claim salience, claim militarization, and peaceful settlement attempts for the Western Hemisphere and Europe for the years 1900-2001. Work is underway for the rest of the world, with the Middle East nearly complete and work on both Asia/Oceania and Africa making slower progress; data for these additional regions will be released as soon as possible.
| Region | Status | Number of Claims (and Dyadic Claims) |
| Western Hemisphere | Data collection completed (1900-2001) | 45 distinct maritime zones (68 dyadic claims/2374 dyad-years) |
| Europe | Data collection completed (1900-2001) | 42 distinct maritime zones (75 dyadic claims/854 dyad-years) |
| Africa | Research currently underway | |
| Middle East | Research currently underway | |
| Asia and Oceania | Research currently underway |
Beginning in 2019, we have started publishing quarterly reviews of events occurring in any of the four current ICOW issue types -- territorial, river, maritime, or identity claims -- during three-month periods. These reviews describe such events as the beginning of new claims, the occurrence of military or other provocations related to the issue, and attempts to manage or settle the issues peacefully. Besides posting each quarterly review at the above link, we also offer a DuckDuckGo custom search that allows users to search for reviews that contain such terms as names of territories, countries, or leaders. (For now, this is limited to ICOW's quarterly reviews of news over territorial, river, maritime, or identity claims, covering events since the beginning of 2019. In the future, we plan to expand this search to include access to summary web pages for each of the more than 1200 claims identified by the ICOW project, which will be created as part of the next external grant that the ICOW project receives.)
Descriptive Details
Version 1.1 of the ICOW Maritime Claims data set includes claims over a total of 87 distinct maritime zones. Some of these areas are claimed by multiple claimants at various points in time or are settled temporarily only to see renewed claims later (perhaps related to expanded claims to offshore maritime zones), so these claims include 143 dyadic claims that together cover 3228 dyad-years. These claims have been managed through 95 militarized interstate disputes and 496 peaceful settlement attempts (including bilateral negotiations, non-binding third party activities like mediation or good offices, and binding third party activities like arbitration and adjudication).
Data Set References
The first published article to use the ICOW Maritime Claims data set was Hensel, Mitchell, Sowers, and Thyne's 2008 JCR article:
- 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): 117-143.
The first paper to focus specifically on maritime claims is:
- 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 originally presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.
Download the Codebooks and Data
All ICOW data sets may be downloaded freely, but we request several professional courtesies from users:
- (1) Please do not redistribute ICOW data to other scholars. Instead, every user should be directed to this web site to download the latest officially released version of the data, which may be more up-to-date. (It would also be desirable for current users of ICOW data to check this web site occasionally to see if newer versions of the data have been released.)
- (2) As you are using the data, if you notice any potential errors or missing cases, please report them to the ICOW project, so that we can investigate and correct the error if appropriate.
- (3) Please email us a copy of any of your research. We are always interested in seeing what other scholars are doing with the data.
Coding Manuals
The following links provide access to the coding manuals and other useful information:
- ICOW Data user's manual (in PDF format; a description and variable list for the full ICOW data on territorial, river, and maritime claims, including peaceful settlement attempts; this file is also included in the data download, below)
- Maritime claims coding manual (in PDF format; the coding rules and instructions that were used by ICOW researchers as they collected and coded the maritime claims data)
- General ICOW coding manual (in PDF format; general coding rules and instructions for ICOW researchers working on the territorial, river, or maritime claims data sets)
- ICOW non-state actor list (in PDF format; a list of actor codes for non-state actors that were involved in ICOW claims, usually as third parties trying to help manage or settle the claims)
Data
The maritime claims data set is included in the main ICOW data download, along with the territorial claims and maritime claims data sets:
- ICOW Data version 1.1 (a .zip archive containing the data in STATA and .CSV format as well as a user's manual in PDF format):
- The latest release version of the ICOW territorial claims, river claims, and maritime claims data sets, including claim dates, participants, salience, militarization, and peaceful settlement attempts (bilateral or third party) for all claims. This release covers territorial claims in the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe (1816-2001); river claims in Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, and the Middle East (1900-2001); and maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001). Additional research is currently underway to extend the coverage of each of these three issue types to the remaining regions of the world.
Please note that this, like all ICOW data sets, uses the list of country codes in the COW interstate system. Please see that list for help in identifying which countries were involved in the events included in this data set, or for any questions about when each country was considered a sovereign, recognized state.
Contact Information
The ICOW Maritime Claims data set is collected and maintained by Sara McLaughlin Mitchell at the University of North Texas. Please contact her with any questions about the data set:
http://www.paulhensel.org/icowmar.html
Last updated: 21 November 2019
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