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Understanding the causes of interstate conflict continues to be a primary goal of the field of international relations. To that end, scholars continue to rely on large datasets of conflict in the international system. This paper introduces the latest iteration in the most widely used dataset on interstate conflicts, the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) 4 data. In this paper we first outline the updated data-collection process for the MID4 data. Second, we present some minor changes and clarifications to the coding rules for the MID4 datasets, as well as pointing out how the MID coding procedures affect several notable “close call” cases. Third, we introduce updates to the existing MID datasets for the years 2002–2010 and provide descriptive statistics that allow comparisons of the newer MID data to prior versions. We also offer some best practices and point out several ways in which the new MID data can contribute to research in international conflict.
Palmer et al. (2015) studied this question.