Militarized Compellent Threats, 1918–2001

The study of military coercion is a central topic in international relations, and in recent years research on coercive threats has yielded a long list of important theoretical innovations. In 1960, Thomas Schelling drew a distinction between threats meant to deter and those designed to compel, but empirical research about coercion has paid much more attention to deterrence than compellence. This is problematic because deterrence and compellence are thought to operate according to different dynamics. This article introduces the Militarized Compellent Threats dataset, which is designed specifically to help test hypotheses about the use and effectiveness of compellent threats in international politics. I describe the rationale behind the dataset, present coding procedures and basic descriptive statistics, and offer comparisons to several related datasets.

[1]  E. Goldstein.  Wars and peace treaties, 1816-1991 , 1992 .

[2]  P. Lauren.  Ultimata and Coercive Diplomacy , 1972 .

[3]  Gary Goertz,et al.  War and peace in international rivalry , 2000 .

[4]  Branislav L. Slantchev.  Military Coercion in Interstate Crises , 2005, American Political Science Review.

[5]  Paul K. Huth.  Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict , 1996 .

[6]  John Stuckey.  Capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820–1965 (1972) (with Stuart A. Bremer and , 2012 .

[7]  J. Fearon.  Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes , 1994, American Political Science Review.

[8]  Daryl G. Press.  Calculating credibility : how leaders assess military threats , 2005 .

[9]  Faten Ghosn,et al.  The MID3 Data Set, 1993—2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description , 2004 .

[10]  Brandon C. Prins,et al.  Beyond Territorial Contiguity: Issues at Stake in Democratic Militarized Interstate Disputes , 1999 .

[11]  R. Powell,et al.  Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility , 1990 .

[12]  N. P. Gleditsch,et al.  Peace and Democracy , 1997 .

[13]  W. Petersen.  Deterrence and Compellence: A Critical Assessment of Conventional Wisdom , 1986 .

[14]  Peter Karsten,et al.  Military Threats: A Systematic Historical Analysis of the Determinants of Success , 1984 .

[15]  R. Jackson,et al.  International Conflict: A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 , 1997 .

[16]  J. David Singer,et al.  Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816–1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patterns , 1996 .

[17]  Paul K. Huth.  DETERRENCE AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Debates , 1999 .

[18]  D. Shriver.  Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Chronology of Conflict and Resolution , 1979 .

[19]  Darren Filson,et al.  Bargaining and Fighting: The Impact of Regime Type on War Onset, Duration, and Outcomes , 2004 .

[20]  K. Beardsley,et al.  Winning with the Bomb , 2009 .

[21]  Bruce Russett,et al.  Peace, war, and numbers , 1972 .

[22]  Sonali Singh,et al.  The Correlates of Nuclear Proliferation , 2004 .

[23]  Paul K. Huth.  Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War , 1988 .

[24]  Todd S. Sechser,et al.  Goliath's Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power , 2010, International Organization.

[25]  R. K. Betts,et al.  Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance , 1987 .

[26]  Kristopher W. Ramsay.  Politics at the Water’s Edge , 2004 .

[27]  Gelenberg Aj,et al.  Threats and promises. , 1995 .

[28]  J. Cable.  Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1991 , 1994 .

[29]  W. Thompson.  Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics , 2001 .

[30]  L. Freedman.  Strategic coercion: concepts and cases , 1998 .

[31]  Todd S. Sechser,et al.  The Coercive Limits of Nuclear Weapons , 2011 .

[32]  Michael Horowitz,et al.  When Does Aerial Bombing Work? , 2001 .

[33]  R. Mandel.  The Effectiveness of Gunboat Diplomacy , 1986 .

[34]  J. Wilkenfeld,et al.  A Study of Crisis , 1997 .

[35]  Alexander B. Downes,et al.  The Illusion of Democratic Credibility , 2012, International Organization.

[36]  Peter J. Partell,et al.  Audience Costs and Interstate Crises: An Empirical Assessment of Fearon's Model of Dispute Outcomes , 1999 .

[37]  Bruce Russett,et al.  Testing Deterrence Theory: Rigor Makes a Difference , 1990, World Politics.

[38]  King Vidor,et al.  War and peace = 戦争と平和 , 1865 .

[39]  R. Art.  To What Ends Military Power? , 1980 .

[40]  J. Fearon.  Selection Effects and Deterrence , 2002 .

[41]  Kenneth A. Schultz.  Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy: Index , 2001 .

[42]  R. Lebow,et al.  Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter , 1989, World Politics.

[43]  J. Cable.  Gunboat diplomacy, 1919-1979: Political applications of limited naval force , 1994 .

[44]  M. Sarkees,et al.  Resort to War: 1816 - 2007 , 2010 .

[45]  Shuhei Kurizaki.  Efficient Secrecy: Public versus Private Threats in Crisis Diplomacy , 2007, American Political Science Review.

[46]  D. S. Bennett,et al.  The Escalation of Great Power Militarized Disputes: Testing Rational Deterrence Theory and Structural Realism , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[47]  William Reed,et al.  Information and Economic Interdependence , 2003 .

[48]  Margaret E. Scranton,et al.  Managing interstate conflict, 1945-74 : data with synopses , 1976 .

[49]  P. Jakobsen.  Western Use of Coercive Diplomacy after the Cold War: A Challenge for Theory and Practice , 1998 .

[50]  Robert F. Trager.  Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy: How Communication Matters , 2010, American Political Science Review.

[51]  Kenneth A. Schultz.  Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy , 2001 .

[52]  Patrick J. Haney,et al.  American Foreign Policy in a New Era , 2012 .

[53]  J. Bell,et al.  Border and territorial disputes , 1984 .

[54]  Barry M. Blechman,et al.  Force without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument , 1978 .

[55]  James D. Morrow,et al.  Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining , 1989 .

[56]  W. Güth,et al.  An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining , 1982 .

[57]  Anne E. Sartori.  Deterrence by diplomacy , 2005 .

[58]  J. Fearon.  Rationalist explanations for war , 1995, International Organization.

[59]  Gary J. Schaub.  Deterrence, Compellence, and Prospect Theory , 2004 .

[60]  Jessica L. P. Weeks.  Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve , 2008, International Organization.

[61]  Christopher Gelpi,et al.  Winners or Losers? Democracies in International Crisis, 1918–94 , 2001, American Political Science Review.

[62]  Barry R. Posen,et al.  Military Responses to Refugee Disasters , 1996, International Security.

[63]  James W. Davis.  Threats and Promises: The Pursuit of International Influence , 2000 .

[64]  James D. Fearon,et al.  Signaling Versus the Balance of Power and Interests , 1994 .

[65]  Wilton B. Fowler,et al.  Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice , 1975 .

[66]  Erik Gartzke,et al.  Determinants of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation , 2007 .

[67]  David Ettinger,et al.  Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1494‐2007 (3rd edition) , 2009 .

[68]  Bruce Russett,et al.  Deterrence Failure and Crisis Escalation , 1988 .

[69]  E. Cohen,et al.  Bombing to win : air power and coercion in war , 1996 .

[70]  John E. Jessup.  A chronology of conflict and resolution, 1945-1985 , 1989 .

[71]  T. Schelling,et al.  The Strategy of Conflict. , 1961 .

[72]  Bruce Russett,et al.  What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980 , 1984 .

[73]  A. George.  The Limits Of Coercive Diplomacy , 1971 .

[74]  Tamar Frankel.  [The theory and the practice...]. , 2001, Tijdschrift voor diergeneeskunde.

[75]  Catherine C. Langlois,et al.  When Fully Informed States Make Good the Threat of War: Rational Escalation and the Failure of Bargaining , 2006, British Journal of Political Science.

[76]  John A. Vasquez.  What do we know about war , 2000 .

[77]  Rüdeger Baumann,et al.  Games of Strategy , 1982 .

[78]  Richard J. Norton.  The United States and Coercive Diplomacy , 2004 .

[79]  Branislav L. Slantchev.  Feigning Weakness , 2010, International Organization.

[80]  P. Jakobsen.  Western Use of Coercive Diplomacy after the Cold War , 1998 .

[81]  T. Christensen.  Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace: The Lessons of Mao's Korean War Telegrams , 1992 .

[82]  Kenneth A. Schultz,et al.  Estimating State Preferences in International Crises : Promise and Limitations in Fully Structural Estimation 1 PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE , 2005 .