Identity Claims: Expanding the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Dataset
Principal Investigators: Paul Hensel, University of North Texas
Years of Award: 2015-2017
Managing Service Agency: Office of Naval Research
Project Description:
States have historically and contemporaneously used culture-based identity claims – i.e., explicit demands by one government's officials on behalf of their co-ethnic kinsmen, which often come with offers of economic, military, or political support to these kinsmen – to project their power into the internal affairs of other states or throughout a region. Our project addresses four broad questions.
• How prevalent are identity claims, which states make them, and why?
• How are these claims managed (e.g., militarily or diplomatically), and how can we account for variation in management?
• Do states link identity claims to territorial claims as a way to justify territorial expansion or revision?
• How do identity claims affect the likelihood of conflict (interstate or intrastate) onset and escalation, terrorist acts, and repression of the identity group (i.e., human rights violations)?
This project will gather data on identity claims around the world since World War II to expand the researchers' existing ICOW -- a robust and well-recognized dataset on international conflicts.