Militarized interstate disputes are united historical cases of conflict in which the threat, display or use of military force short of war by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, oficial representatives, oficial forces, property, or territory of another state. Disputes are composed of incidents that range in intensity from threats to use force to actual combat short of war. The new dispute data set generated by the Correlates of War project contains information on over 2,000 such disputes found to have occurred in the period . As in the earlier version of the data set, the participants, start and end dates, fatality totals, and hostility levels for each dispute are identified, but the newer version disaggregatcs this information for each participant and provides additional information about the revisionist state(s), type(s) of revision sought, outcome, and method of settlement for each dispute. A preliminary analysis of the data shows some interesting empircal patterns. Contagion and a slight upward trend are found in the frequency of disputes at the system level. The duration of disputes appears to be positively associated with the level of hostility reached and the number of states involved, and disputes appear to have a feud-like character. The single most important factor found to increase the fatality level of a dispute is the number of states that join after its onset. However, most disputes begin and end as one-on-onc confrontations, and this tendency is stronger in the current period than in the past. An examination of dispute escalation reveals that many disputes begin with uses of force rather than less intense threats or displays of force and that states joining an ongoing dispute raise the likelihood that the dispute will reach higher levels of hostility. With respect to the settlement of disputes it was found that the longer a dispute continues, the higher the likelihood of some settlement, either negotiated or imposed, being achieved, althogh there is a discernable trend away from such settlements over the period studied. A related trend was found with respect to the outcome of disputes as stalemate has become a much more likely outcome in the present than in the past. 163

Dealing with questions of war and peace and understanding the causes of interstate conflict is a primary goal of the field of international relations. In order to study interstate conflict in a rigorous manner, scholars have relied on established rules and procedures for gathering information into coherent data sets. Among those data sets is the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data. In this paper we first outline the data-collection process for the MID3 data. Second, we introduce two new data sets emerging from the project, “MID-I” and “MID-IP.” Third, we present relatively small changes in coding rules for the new MID3 data and some descriptive statistics. The statistics indicate that the MID3 data are remarkably similar to the MID2.1 version, varying in some minor and predictable ways.

An investigation of the relationship between "joint democracy" and militarized interstate conflict over the period 1816-1965 at the dyadic level confirms the inhibitory effect of democracy reported by others. This effect is weaker with respect to less violent types of interstate conflict than with wars but significant nevertheless. This supports the argument that the lower level of conflict among democratic states is mainly due to the way in which they manage serious conflicts with one another rather than to the avoidance of serious conflict. The conflict-reducing nature of "joint democracy" is present and strong even after controlling for the effects of geographical proximity, relative power, alliance, power status, development, militarization, and the presence of a hegemon. This leads to the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that the relationship found is a spurious one.

Theoretical arguments and some empirical evidence suggest that war is more likely to occur between states that are geographically proximate, approximately equal in power, major powers, allied, undemocratic, economically advanced, and highly militarized than between those that are not. Bivariate analyses of these seven factors in relation to the onset of interstate war over all pairs of states in the period from 1816 to 1965 generally support these associations. However, multivariate analyses reveal some differences. In order of declining importance, the conditions that characterize a dangerous, war-prone dyad are: presence of contiguity, absence of alliance, absence of more advanced economy, absence of democratic polity, absence of overwhelming preponderance, and presence of major power. Taken together these findings suggest that our research priorities may be seriously distorted and that the idealist prescription for peace may be better than the realist one.

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