whittle_conflicts_onsets {peacesciencer}

Whittle Unique Conflict Onset-Years from Conflict-Year Data

Description

whittle_conflicts_reciprocation() is in a class of do-it-yourself functions for coercing (i.e. "whittling") conflict-year data with cross-sectional units to unique conflict-year data by cross-sectional unit. The inspiration here is clearly the problem of whittling dyadic dispute-year data into true dyad-year data (like in the Gibler-Miller-Little conflict data). This particular function will drop ongoing conflicts in the presence of unique onsets.

Usage

whittle_conflicts_onsets(data)

wc_onsets(...)

Arguments

data

a data frame with a declared conflict attribute type.

...

optional, only to make the shortcut work

Details

Dyads are capable of having multiple disputes in a given year, which can create a problem for merging into a complete dyad-year data frame. Consider the case of France and Italy in 1860, which had three separate dispute onsets that year (MID#0112, MID#0113, MID#0306), as illustrative of the problem. The default process in peacesciencer employs several rules to whittle down these duplicate dyad-years for merging into a dyad-year data frame. These are available in add_cow_mids() and add_gml_mids().

wc_onsets() is a simple, less wordy, shortcut for the same function.

Value

whittle_conflicts_onsets() takes a dyad-year data frame or leader-dyad-year data frame with a declared conflict attribute type and, grouping by the dyad and year, returns just those observations with unique onsets where duplicates exist. This will not eliminate all duplicates, far from it, but it's a sensible place to start.

Author(s)

Steven V. Miller

References

Miller, Steven V. 2021. "How peacesciencer Coerces Dispute-Year Data into Dyad-Year Data". URL: http://svmiller.com/peacesciencer/articles/coerce-dispute-year-dyad-year.html

Examples

# just call `library(tidyverse)` at the top of the your script
library(magrittr)
gml_dirdisp %>% whittle_conflicts_onsets()

cow_mid_dirdisps %>% whittle_conflicts_onsets()