Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815-1944

Abstract

This article introduces the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset. We begin by describing the rationale for collecting the ATOP data, its scope, and some general coding rules for the project. Then we offer some descriptive statistics for phase one of the dataset, which covers the years 1815-1944, and reveal some interesting trends in alliance politics. Finally, we replicate a study of alliance formation originally conducted by Lai and Reiter (2000) to demonstrate the effect the use of ATOP data may have on past inferences about alliance politics.

Determinants of Sanctions Effectiveness: Sensitivity Analysis Using New Data

“…Recorded as 1 if the primary sender and the target are formally allied (Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, and Long 2002). …”

What drives interstate balancing? Estimations of domestic and systemic factors

“…One such factor that could be easily explored was the overall dissimilarity between the regimes of both states within a dyad, because -as noted above -previous studies have shown that this factor tends to have an exacerbating impact on conflicts (Souva 2004). 26 Accordingly, states may perceive a competitor as more or less threatening depending on how different the regimes of both 25 See Leeds et al (2002) for a description of this dataset. All data and codebooks are available online at:…”

A winning proposition? States’ military effectiveness and the reliability of their allies

“…I use the population of cases provided by Leeds (2003), which is based on the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) data set (Leeds et al, 2002). The version of the data used here contains 143 cases spanning from 1816 to 1944 and is directed, such that each case refers to one member of an alliance at a point in time in which the terms of the alliance are called into effect (what Leeds calls 'war performance opportunities') (Leeds, 2003, pp.…”

“…Alliances involve costs for all members and thus are not likely to be entered into lightly, and yet the existence of alliance violations in world history is indisputable. Formal theoretical work on alliances by Smith (1995Smith ( , 1996, Morrow (1994) and Fearon (1997) offers models that expect no violation of alliances or very infrequent violation of alliances, even though empirical work has established that formal alliances are violated approximately 25 percent of the time (Leeds et al, 2002).…”