Regan Interventions Data

This data provides information on conflicts and any associated interventions. Third party interventions are defined as in intra-state conflicts as convention breaking military and/or economic activities in the internal affairs of a foreign country targeted at the authority structures of the government with the aim of affecting the balance of power between the government and opposition forces. The data record information about the intervention along a number of specific categories. The type of intervention is coded on two dimensions: first, whether the intervention involved military or economic instruments. The month and year in which an intervention is undertaken are recorded, as are the type and magnitude of the intervention. For example, a military intervention into a conflict would be recorded as to whether it involved one of six categories (troops, naval support, equipment or aid, intelligence or advisors, air support, or sanctions) and the size of the intervention in each category. Size is recorded in terms of the number of troops, the dollar value of the aid, the number of weapons, or whatever the particular metric applicable for the specific category. The data also notes interventions in which there was a direct use of force by the intervener. The same type of information was recorded for economic interventions.

For each particular month that a conflict is ongoing, data are recorded on a number of contextual and structural variables, as well as the initiation of any outside interventions. For each month that a conflict was ongoing, a data point was recorded, and within each conflict month, data on characteristics of the conflict and any interventions were identified and recorded. The unit of analysis is the conflict month. There are a total of 13,048 conflict months in the data. The longest running conflict spans a total of 616 months; the shortest lasts only 1 month.^{[ref 1]}

Variables and Subcategories

This data involves the Geography Variables category in the subcategory of Demographic Data.

This data can answer questions like:

• What is the size of the largest opposition force in the conflict?

Data Quality

The Palestinian conflict within the occupied territories of Israel presented unique and insurmountable coding problems. Numerous outside actors intervened in support of either the Palestinian or Israeli cause, but it was nearly impossible to identify each specific intervention and to determine that it satisfied the convention-breaking and authority-targeted criteria. In addition, support for the Palestinians does not always come to or through the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), making it particularly difficult to determine what constitutes an intervention. So much of the aid for Israel and the Palestinians reflects ongoing commitments, even though it also seems to be targeted directly to the patterns of authority. In this sense, much of what transpires in this conflict meets the authority-targeted criterion but not the convention-breaking one.^{[ref 2]}

Specific events that are not coded in the data that have been raised by other researchers involve: the Bay of Pigs incursion, operation PBsuccess, Sudan and Egypt in Chad (1981), and US in Nicaragua in the years 1989-1992 (ONUCA).

Additionally, there is the question of what constitutes an intervention. Should countries that get huge levels of aid from another be considered ‘intervened’ or not?^{[ref 3]}

References

1. ↑ Patrick Regan, "Third-party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 46, No. 55, 2002.
2. ↑ Patrick M. Regan, "Third-party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts," Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 46, No. 55, 2002.
3. ↑ Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, Andrea González Peña, "Force and Ambiguity: Evaluating Sources For Cross-National Research – The Case of Military Interventions," Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Crisis States Research Centre, Working Paper No. 50, June 2009.

Regan, Patrick M. 2002. ―Third Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflict‖, Journal of Conflict Resolution, February 2002. Available at http:/bingweb.binghamton.edu/~pregan/