My colleague William Long and I have begun a project to explore the impact of reconciliation events on the relations between countries. What we mean by a reconciliation event is an event involving the countries that typically includes the following elements: (1) direct physical contact or proximity between opponents, usually the senior representatives of the respective states; (2) a public ceremony accompanied by substantial publicity or media attention that relays the event to the wider national societies; and (3) ritualistic or symbolic behavior that indicates the parties consider the quarrel resolved and that more amicable relations are expected to follow. An example of a reconciliation event is Menachem Begin shaking hands with Anwar Sadat in 1978.
We wish to determine whether reconciliation events actually result in improved relations between the countries, and if so, how. Our first foray into resolving this question can be found in our paper, War and Reconciliation, that we presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association held in Toronto, March 18-22, 1997. Interested individuals can obtain the paper by contacting either Bill or me.
As part of the research involved in writing that paper, I wrote a set of FORTRAN programs to extract those data pertaining to country pairs (dyads) of interest to our research from the COPDAB and WEIS datasets. To save others the time and hassle of writing similar programs if they wish to use those datasets for their own research, I am providing the source code files for those programs.
The files COPRD.FOR and WEISRD.FOR extract the data pertaining to the two countries that the user types in at the beginning when running the programs. The programs produce output files containing monthly aggregations of the variables: conflict, cooperation, and net conflict (conflict minus cooperation) for the particular dyad. COPRD produces those variables using the COPDAB scale; WEIS produces the variables using the Goldstein scale. The files CFILL.FOR and WFILL.FOR "pad" the output files by putting in zeros for those months where there are no data in COPDAB or WEIS. I have slightly more complicated programs to deal with the situations where a country changed its name and/or nature such as West Germany -> Germany. An individual desiring those programs can contact me for them.
The program source code files are quite well documented. To the best of my knowledge, the programs are bug-free, but I absolve myself of any responsibility regarding the results one might get from using these programs.
To get the program for extracting data from COPDAB, click here.
To get the program for extracting data from WEIS, click here.
To get the program for padding the output file from COPREAD, click here.
To get the program for padding the output from from WEISRD, click here.
(Note that you will get the source code in the screen of your web browser. To put the code in a useable form for your computer's compiler, save the "page" to a file.)
Last Update: 3 June 2002
Peter Brecke … Sam Nunn School of International Affairs … Georgia Institute of Technology … Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0610 USA … Tel 404 894-6599 … Fax 404 894-1900 … Email peter.brecke@inta.gatech.edu