AN OVERVIEW OF DATABASES ON CONFLICTS AND POLITICAL CRISES

Abstract

This paper provides overview of the important projects concerned with development of databases on conflicts, crises and similar political events and those dealing with the structural characteristics of nation-states. The different databases are usually differently conceptualized, even when they describe the same phenomenon. Different conceptualization of the problem leads to different operational definitions, and eventually to different coding rules. Therefore, the researcher intending to use existing data for the purpose of statistical analysis or modelling the social processes can became lost browsing the multitude of different datasets. In this overview, the short descriptions of important data-gathering project include information on the institution where the project is placed, its principal investigators, year span and number of cases it includes. In the end all mentioned databases are classified according the focus (event/structure) and the level (nation-state/international relations) of observation.