This data set records the geographic locations of MIDs in latitude/longitude coordinates, per dispute and per incident. Dispute version 2.1 (MIDLOC-A) covers the 1816-2010 period. Incident version 2.1 (MIDLOC-I) covers the 1993-2010 period. The population of disputes and incidents in both datasets match the population of disputes and incidents in MID v4.3.
MID Locations, 1816-2010 (v2.1)
This data set records the geographic locations of MIDs in latitude/longitude coordinates, per dispute and per incident. Dispute version 2.1 (MIDLOC-A) covers the 1816-2010 period. Incident version 2.1 (MIDLOC-I) covers the 1993-2010 period. The population of disputes and incidents in both datasets match the population of disputes and incidents in MID v4.3.
Overview
The Militarized Interstate Dispute Location (MIDLOC) dataset details the precise geographic location of Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) in the post-Napoleonic era (from 1816 – 2010), complementing the Correlates of War (COW) Project’s considerable empirical data collection. MIDLOC consists of two datasets:
The MIDLOC-A dataset offers a single point location to represent each MID between 1816 and 2010. This location corresponds to the dispute’s onset. Following common convention, latitude and longitude point coordinates are recorded for each observation. Latitude is measured as the angular distance, in decimalized degrees (DD), of a point north or south of the equator. Similarly, longitude is measured as the angular distance, in decimalized degrees (DD), of a point east or west of the Prime (Greenwich) Meridian. There are a total of 2,315 individual records in MIDLOC-A. This is comprised of recorded onset locations for 2,230 independent MIDs from the MID v4.3 (Palmer et al. forthcoming) dataset – approximately 96% data coverage. 1,777 of these 2,315 onsets took place between 1816 and 1992 and 538 between 1993 and 2010. A total of just 85 MIDs remain without a recorded onset location.
The MIDLOC-I dataset offers point locations to represent each MID incident between 1993 and 2010. Following common convention, latitude and longitude point coordinates are recorded for each observation. Latitude is measured as the angular distance, in decimalized degrees (DD), of a point north or south of the equator. Similarly, longitude is measured as the angular distance, in decimalized degrees (DD), of a point east or west of the Prime (Greenwich) Meridian. There are a total of 3,306 individual records in MIDLOC-I. This is comprised of recorded locations for 3,131 individual MID incidents from the MID v4.3 (Palmer et al. forthcoming) dataset – approximately 95% data coverage. 2,082 of these 3,306 incidents took place between 1993 and 2001 and 1,224 between 2002 and 2010. A total of just 175 MID incidents remain without a recorded location.
Updates since Version 2.0
MIDLOC v2.1 represents a nontrivial update from v2.0 consisting of two substantive changes. First, the population of events in MIDLOC v2.1 now matches the population of events in MID v4.3. Second, the column indicating to which PRIO-GRID cell an event belongs has been completely corrected.
Citation
In any papers or publications that utilize this dataset, users are asked to give the version number and cite the articles of record for the dataset, as follows:
Braithwaite, A. 2010. “MIDLOC: Introducing the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) Location Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research 47(1): 91-98.
Bezerra, P., & Braithwaite, A. 2019. Codebook for the Militarized Interstate Dispute Location (MIDLOC-A/I) Dataset, v2.1.
Dataset
The data are distributed in flat text, comma-separated-variable (.csv) files. By default under Microsoft Windows, .csv files will open in Microsoft Excel. But the file may be opened in any program that reads text. In the statistical analysis program Stata, the file may be easily loaded using the command “insheet using MIDLOCI_2.1.csv” or “insheet using MIDLOCA_2.1.csv”
NOTE: Both MIDLOC datasets, and codebooks, are now included in a single downloadable file.
Questions and Feedback
The MIDLOC datasets are hosted by Alex Braithwaite, University of Arizona, under the COW Data Hosting Program. In case of questions or concerns concerning the data or coding rules, he may be contacted by e-mail at abraith@arizona.edu.
MIDLOC v2.1
ZIP file containing MIDLOC 2.1 csv and codebook
MIDLOC_2.1.zip — 723 KB
MIDLOC v2.0
ZIP file containing all documents
midloc2.0.zip — 2177 KB
MIDLOC v1.1
ZIP file containing both documents
MIDLOC_v1.1.zip — Zip archive, 184 KB (188892 bytes)