Load conflict and mobilization data

Loads one of ten conflict, protest, or revolutionary episode datasets bundled with the package. scad, ucdp_prio, ucdp_vpp, mm, and mmad are returned at the country-year level; their event- or conflict-level source rows are aggregated inside this function.

navco1.3, beissinger, csra, and mec return campaign or episode records; navco2.1 returns campaign-year rows. These sources can contain multiple rows for one country-year. Use add_conflict(aggregate = TRUE) (the default) to collapse them to country-year.

Usage

conflict_data(
  start_year = 1945,
  end_year = 2013,
  dataset = c("navco1.3", "navco2.1", "beissinger", "csra", "scad", "ucdp_prio",
    "ucdp_vpp", "mm", "mmad", "mec"),
  coding_system = c("cow", "gw")
)

Source

NAVCO 2.1: doi:10.7910/DVN/MHOXDV .

Beissinger Revolutionary Episodes: https://web.archive.org/web/20250331220952/https://mbeissinger.scholar.princeton.edu/revolutionary-episodes-dataset.

HSE Revolutionary Database: https://social.hse.ru/mr/rev_bd.

SCAD: https://www.strausscenter.org/ccaps-research-areas/social-conflict/database/.

UCDP: https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/replication_data.html.

MMAD: https://mmadatabase.org/.

MEC: Chenoweth and Kang (2026), doi:10.1093/jopres/xjaf008 ; data release doi:10.7910/DVN/JQWQNW .

Arguments

start_year

First year to include.

end_year

Last year to include.

dataset

Dataset to load. One of:

"navco1.3"

NAVCO 1.3 campaign onsets. Coverage: 1900-2019.

"navco2.1"

NAVCO 2.1 campaign-years. Coverage: 1945-2013.

"beissinger"

Beissinger revolutionary episode onsets. Coverage: 1900-2014.

"csra"

HSE CSRA revolutionary episodes. Coverage: 2000-2024.

"scad"

SCAD 2018 social conflict events, Africa and Latin America. Recorded event starts: 1989-2017 (the 1989 event continues into the source's 1990 coverage period). Prefix: scad_.

"ucdp_prio"

UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset v26.1. Coverage: 1946-2025. Prefix: ucdp_prio_.

"ucdp_vpp"

UCDP Violent Political Protest Dataset v26.1. Coverage: 1989-2025. Prefix: ucdp_vpp_. Requires the readxl package.

"mm"

Mass Mobilization Project v4 (Clark and Regan). Coverage: 1990-2020. Prefix: mm_.

"mmad"

Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database. Coverage: 2003-2022. Prefix: mmad_.

"mec"

Major Episodes of Contention. Global coverage: 1955-2018. Episode records; prefix: mec_.

coding_system

Country coding system: "cow" or "gw". ucdp_prio and ucdp_vpp use GW codes natively; when coding_system = "cow" they are converted via countrycode and countries without a COW equivalent are dropped.

Value

A data frame. navco1.3, beissinger, csra, and mec contain one row per campaign or episode record; navco2.1 contains campaign-year rows. The other datasets contain one row per country-year.

Details

All outputs use the requested cow or gw key and year. Dataset-specific columns have a stable source prefix. A missing country-year row is not created by this loader; after add_conflict(), an unmatched year is NA, not an assumed zero.

SCAD is deduplicated to one row per event before country-year aggregation. Its UCDP placeholder rows are excluded, and documented negative codes for unknown death counts are treated as missing.

For UCDP/PRIO, ucdp_prio_incidence identifies any active conflict-year and ucdp_prio_onset identifies a new episode using the source's start_date2. The VPP source does not include an episode-start variable; ucdp_vpp_incidence should be preferred. The legacy ucdp_vpp_onset column is retained as an incidence alias for compatibility.

The Mass Mobilization source mixes exact participant counts with text such as ranges and inequalities. mm_participants is the maximum among genuinely numeric values; mm_participants_reported preserves the source strings.

MEC is kept at its published episode level. Its source byear becomes year, ccode becomes cow, and all other source columns receive the mec_ prefix. mec_episode equals one for every returned episode record. Fourteen left-censored records have an actual mec_bdate before 1955 while their source byear is 1955. With GW coding, COW 679 (Yemen) maps to GW 678 and COW 817 (South Vietnam) maps to GW 817; Tonga has no GW state equivalent and is omitted.

References

Chenoweth, E., & Shay, C. W. (2020). List of Campaigns in NAVCO 1.3. Harvard Dataverse. doi:10.7910/DVN/ON9XND

Chenoweth, E., & Shay, C. W. (2019). NAVCO 2.1 Dataset. Harvard Dataverse. doi:10.7910/DVN/MHOXDV

Beissinger, M. (2022). Revolutionary Episodes Dataset.

Ustyuzhanin, V., Semichev, D., Grinin, L., & Korotaev, A. (2026). Revolutionary Database (2000-2024), Version 1.102. HSE University, Centre for Stability and Risk Analysis. https://social.hse.ru/mr/rev_bd

Salehyan, I., Hendrix, C. S., Hamner, J., Case, C., Linebarger, C., Stull, E., & Williams, J. (2012). Social conflict in Africa: A new database. International Interactions, 38(4), 503-511. doi:10.1080/03050629.2012.697426

Gleditsch, N. P., Wallensteen, P., Eriksson, M., Sollenberg, M., & Strand, H. (2002). Armed conflict 1946-2001: A new dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 39(5), 615-637. doi:10.1177/0022343302039005007

Svensson, I., Schaftenaar, S., & Allansson, M. (2022). Violent political protest: Introducing a new Uppsala Conflict Data Program data set on organized violence, 1989-2019. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 66(9), 1703-1730.

Clark, D. H., & Regan, P. M. (2016). Mass Mobilization Protest Data. Harvard Dataverse. doi:10.7910/DVN/HTTWYL

Weidmann, N. B., & Rød, E. G. (2019). The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies. Oxford University Press.

Chenoweth, E., & Kang, S. (2026). The Major Episodes of Contention (MEC) Data Project: An introduction. Journal of Peace Research, 63(4), 724-734. doi:10.1093/jopres/xjaf008

Examples

navco <- conflict_data(1990, 2010, dataset = "navco2.1", coding_system = "cow")

scad  <- conflict_data(1995, 2015, dataset = "scad",      coding_system = "cow")

ucdp  <- conflict_data(1990, 2020, dataset = "ucdp_prio", coding_system = "gw")

mec   <- conflict_data(1990, 2010, dataset = "mec",       coding_system = "cow")