DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09286.v7
title: International Crisis Behavior Project, 1918-2004
title: Version 7

description: This data collection was produced as part of the
International Crisis Behavior Project, a research effort aimed at
investigating 20th-century interstate crises and the behavior of
states under externally generated stress. To this end, the data
describe, over a 86-year period, the sources, processes, and outcomes
of all military-security crises involving states. Variables were
collected at both the micro/state actor level and the
macro/international system level. At the macro level, seven dimensions
of crisis were measured: crisis setting, crisis breakpoint-exitpoint,
crisis management technique, great power/superpower activity,
international organization involvement, crisis outcome, and crisis
severity. Additional macro-level variables indicate various aspects of
geography, polarity, system level, conflict type, power discrepancy,
and involvement by powers. At the state actor level, variables
measuring five dimensions of crisis were compiled: crisis trigger,
state actor behavior, great power/superpower activity, international
organization involvement, and crisis outcome. Additional micro-level
variables indicate the role of war in each crisis. Others measure
several kinds of state attributes: age, territory, regime
characteristics, state capability, state values, and social, economic,
and political conditions.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: International Crises
DS2: Crisis Actors
description: Part 1: All international crises occurring between
December 22, 1917, and December 31, 2004, characterized by the
following two conditions: (1) a distortion in the type and an increase
in the intensity of disruptive interactions between two or more
adversaries, with an accompanying high probability of military
hostilities, or, during a war, an adverse change in the military
balance, and (2) a challenge to the existing structure of an
international system -- global, dominant, or subsystem -- posed by the
higher-than-normal conflictual interactions. Part 2: All foreign
policy crises experienced by states due to their involvement in the
international crises defined above. The principal investigators define
a foreign policy crisis as a situation in which three conditions,
deriving from a change in a state's external or internal environment,
are perceived by the highest-level decision-makers of the state: (a) a
threat to basic values, (b) an awareness of finite time for response
to the external threat to basic values, and (c) a high probability of
involvement in military hostilities.
description: The two parts of this collection are linked by
common identification numbers. The unit of observation for Part 1,
which contains the macro-level data, is the international crisis. The
unit of observation for Part 2, which contains the micro-level data,
is the crisis actors involved. In all, the data cover 445
international crises involving 979 state actors. Both parts include
non-numeric data.A full description of the datasets, coding
procedures, case summaries, and analyses are contained in Michael
Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A STUDY OF CRISIS, Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2000. as well as the study Web site,
http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/icb/.Data for two cases in an
ongoing/interim category, Iran Nuclear and North Korea Nuclear, were
coded as pending. Coding is anticipated to be completed in the coming
year.