Original case-level data records U.S. presidential behavior in international militarized conflicts, focusing on public threats and subsequent actions. It was compiled by Olena Zhul through manual case selection and qualitative content analysis of presidential statements and historical accounts. The dataset was last updated in March 2026.
Use Cases
- Analyze the relationship between a president's public statement and the observed outcome of backing down or following through.
- Examine how issue salience coding across ideology, U.S. grand strategy, and economic significance correlates with conflict escalation.
- Model domestic audience-cost conditions using variables for elite engagement from the president's party, opposition actors, and non-political elites.
- Conduct comparative case analysis on presidential name and term across different international conflicts.
Strengths
- Includes original coding of issue salience across three distinct dimensions.
- Provides narrative justification and source lists for each case-level coding decision.
Limitations
- Sample size is unknown, which may limit statistical power for quantitative analysis.
- Relies on manual qualitative content analysis, which may introduce coder subjectivity.
Provenance
- Source
- Harvard Dataverse, author Olena Zhul.
- Collection Method
- Compiled through manual case selection and qualitative content analysis of presidential statements, historical accounts, and secondary literature.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- Updated March 2026.
- Geography
- United States presidential involvement in international conflicts.