International Conflict and Cooperation: Splicing COPDAB and WEIS Series

Abstract

Events data sets are used extensively in the study of international relations. The Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB) data from 1948 to 1978 and the World Events Interaction Survey (WEIS) data since 1966 are the two events data sets that are most widely used. In this article a simple method is proposed to combine (or splice) COPDAB and WEIS events time series in order to create a single spliced time series from 1948 to 1993. Past research on the compatibility of COPDAB and WEIS is inconclusive: some authors claim that COPDAB and WEIS are compatible, while others claim they are not. We here investigate six dyads and show that the compatibility of WEIS and COPDAB depends on the particular dyad in question, but the two series are generally compatible so that COPDAB and WEIS can be spliced into one time series in five out of six dyads. (One dyad contains too many periods of missing reports in the data.) The article is organized in the following sections: The COPDAB and WEIS data sets are described in the first section. The second section reviews the literature about the COPDAB and WEIS compatibility. The third section outlines our approach to the question of compatibility. Statistical tests for compatibility and the method for splicing the two data sets are provided in the fourth section. A summary of our findings is provided in the last section.