Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs)

This lecture introduces the militarized interstate dispute dataset.

Takeaway Points

1. A militarized interstate dispute (MID) is a case “of conflict in which the threat, display or use of military force short of war by one member state is explicitly directed towards the government, official representatives, official forces, property, or territory of another state.”
2. There were 2586 such disputes between 1816 and 2010.
3. The number of disputes per year has been steadily increasing, but the number of disputes per year per state has not.
4. The vast majority of all disputes last less than a few days.