Uppsala Conflict Data Program

Uppsala Conflict Data Program
Name	Uppsala Conflict Data Program
Established	1989
Location	Uppsala University, Sweden
Discipline	Conflict studies
Notable	[data on armed conflict, battle deaths, dyadic wars]

Uppsala Conflict Data Program

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is a research initiative based at Uppsala University that systematically compiles quantitative data on organized violence, state-based armed conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence. It is widely cited alongside projects such as the Correlates of War, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in analyses that involve datasets used by scholars at institutions including Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Oxford, Columbia University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The program’s datasets underpin reporting by organizations like the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank as well as journal articles in outlets such as Journal of Peace Research, American Political Science Review, and International Security.

Overview

The program originated in the late 1980s through collaboration among scholars at Uppsala University, influenced by methodological advances from the Cold War era and comparative work at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. It produces time-series and event datasets that cover episodes such as the Yugoslav Wars, the Rwandan Genocide, the Syrian Civil War, and conflicts in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East, and Latin America. The research team has included figures associated with projects at Lund University, King's College London, University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University. Its outputs are used in policy analyses by actors such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the African Union, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Methodology and Data Collection

UCDP employs event-based and dyadic coding schemes informed by definitions comparable to the Correlates of War and the International Crisis Behavior Project. It distinguishes categories like state-based conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence, relying on source triangulation from agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Amnesty International, and media outlets like the BBC, The New York Times, and Agence France-Presse. Coding protocols reference standards used by scholars at Stanford University and Princeton University and integrate geographic identifiers consistent with gazetteers maintained by GeoNames and the United States Geological Survey. Teams apply inter-coder reliability checks similar to those advocated by researchers at Columbia University and use temporal aggregation approaches used in work by Paul Collier and James Fearon.

Datasets and Variables

Key products include the UCDP/PRIO Dyadic Dataset, the UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia, the UCDP One-Sided Violence dataset, and the UCDP Non-State Conflict dataset, which are used alongside comparative datasets like the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Global Terrorism Database. Variables capture annual battle-related deaths, conflict onset and termination dates, actor names such as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, FARC, Taliban, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and Hezbollah, territorial control indicators used in studies of Chechnya, Kosovo War, and Donbas War, and dyadic indicators referencing states like United States, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan. Geographic coding enables integration with remote-sensing data from Landsat and MODIS, and socioeconomic covariates link to datasets from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Programme.

Major Findings and Publications

Work based on the program’s data has produced high-impact findings on trends in battle deaths, civil war recurrence, and the relationship between natural resources and conflict, cited in analyses by scholars such as Paul Collier, Nils Petter Gleditsch, James Fearon, Elisabeth Leake, and Morten Bøås. Influential publications using the data appear in venues like Nature, Science, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Conflict Resolution and tackle cases including the Second Sudanese Civil War, the Iraq War, and the Libyan Civil War. The datasets have been instrumental in books published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Routledge on topics linked to post-conflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone, transitional justice in South Africa, and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

Impact and Applications

Policymakers at the United Nations Security Council, analysts at the European Commission, and practitioners in NGOs like Doctors Without Borders and International Rescue Committee use the program’s data for early warning, humanitarian planning, and evaluation of peacekeeping missions such as those led by UNMISS, MINUSMA, and UNIFIL. Academics integrate UCDP outputs into cross-national econometric models developed at London School of Economics and University of Michigan, comparative case studies at Brown University and Duke University, and machine-learning workflows at Carnegie Mellon University. The data also support forensic and accountability efforts tied to tribunals like the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Criticism and Limitations

Scholars and practitioners have critiqued the program for issues familiar to large-scale conflict datasets, including undercounting in remote areas such as parts of Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, challenges in attributing responsibility in complex cases like Syria and Yemen, and coder subjectivity debated in methodological exchanges with teams from ACLED and Human Rights Watch. Debates involve temporal resolution versus event aggregation, comparability with the Global Terrorism Database, and biases noted by analysts at Princeton University and University of Chicago. The program addresses some limitations through transparency, codebook releases, and updates, though users must still consider selection effects highlighted in critiques from authors affiliated with Harvard Kennedy School and Stanford Hoover Institution.

Category:Conflict data projects