Department of Political Science

International Military Intervention

The International Military Intervention (IMI) data set records events involving “the movement of regular troops or forces (airborne, seaborne, shelling, etc) of one country inside another, in the context of some political issue or dispute” (Pearson and Baumann, 1993, 1). Paramilitaries, government backed militias, private security forces, and other military units that are not part of the regular uniformed military of the state are excluded. Similarly, events must be purposeful, not accidental. Foreign military interventions are the result of conscious decisions by national leaders. Random or inadvertent border crossings are not recorded, nor are unintentional confrontations between fighter planes or naval ships. In all, 1114 cases meeting these criteria are cataloged for the years 1946 to 2005. Twenty-seven separate pieces of information are coded for each case in an attempt to capture multiple dimensions of the intervention. One result is that the IMI collection has considerable substantive breadth. Analysts can easily separate out and focus on the forms of intervention (supportive, hostile, humanitarian, territorial, etc) that are relevant to their research.

IMI was begun by Frederic S. Pearson and Robert A. Baumann in late 1960s while both were at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Under their guidance, 667 cases of international military intervention spanning the years 1946 to 1988 were coded in IMI. The data collection was deposited in the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan as collection 6035. With the support of NSF award SES-0518294, Emizet N. Kisangani and Jeffrey Pickering of Kansas State University expanded the IMI collection to 2005, adding 449 cases. The updated data is now housed in ICPSR collection 21282 as well as on this website.

Datasets

How to cite the datasets

From 1946 to 1988

Pearson, Frederic S., and Robert A. Baumann. 1993. “International Military Intervention, 1946-1988.” Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Data Collection No 6035, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

From 1989 to 2005

Kisangani, Emizet F., and Jeffrey Pickering. 2008. “International Military Intervention, 1989-2005.” Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Data Collection No 21282, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Contact the people behing the study

Emizet F. Kisangani, Professor
Department of Political Science
Kansas State University
101D Calvin Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
emizetk@ksu.edu

Jeffrey Pickering, Professor
Department of Political Science
Kansas State University
101D Calvin Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
jjp@ksu.edu