Politically active dyads revisited: An update through 2014

Abstract

Empirical identification of opportunity is important since states cannot fight without the opportunity to do so. Various concepts have been developed over the years to measure opportunity—particularly politically relevant dyads, the politically relevant international environment, and regional dyads—but they have struggled to adequately do so. Quackenbush developed a new measure of opportunity, politically active dyad, using contiguity, power status, and alliances as defining characteristics, and demonstrated that it outperformed previous measures. In this research note I present version 2 of the politically active dyads data, with two options: one using Correlates of War data to identify alliances and covering 1816–2012, and the other covering 1816–2014 based on Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions data. I find that active dyads remain the only measure able to capture opportunity as a necessary condition for international conflict and illustrate the impact of these options for quantitative analyses.