gw_mindist {peacesciencer}

The Minimum Distance Between States in the Gleditsch-Ward System, 1886-2019

Description

These are non-directed dyad-year data for the minimum distance between states in the Gleditsch-Ward state system from 1886 to 2018. The data are generated from the cshapes package.

Usage

gw_mindist

Format

A data frame with 868813 observations on the following 4 variables.

gwcode1

the Gleditsch-Ward state system code for the first state

gwcode2

the Gleditsch-Ward state system code for the second state

year

the year

mindist

the minimum distance between states on Jan. 1 of the year, in kilometers

Details

The data are generated from the cshapes package. The package authors purport that the data are generated to be compatible with the Gleditsch-Ward system. I trust them on this; indeed, Gleditsch is one of the authors of the cshapes package.

Data are automatically generated (by default) as directed dyad-years. I elect to make them non-directed for space considerations. Making non-directed dyad-year data into directed dyad-year data isn't too difficult in R. It just looks weird to see the code that does it.

Previous versions of these data were for the minimum distance as of Dec. 31 of the referent year. These are now Jan. 1. Most of the data I prove elsewhere in this package are to be understood as the data as they were at the start of the year. This is how I process, for example, the capitals data as they get merged in the add_capital_distance() function. However, the script that generates these data are set at Jan. 1 of the year and not Dec. 31. Right now, the cshapes does not appear to work on my system and I do not know why. Fortunately, the package authors made these data available.

References

Schvitz, Guy, Luc Girardin, Seraina Ruegger, Nils B. Weidmann, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. 2022. "Mapping The International System, 1886-2017: The CShapes 2.0 Dataset." Journal of Conflict Resolution. 66(1): 144-161.

Weidmann, Nils B. and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. 2010. "Mapping and Measuring Country Shapes: The cshapes Package." The R Journal 2(1): 18-24