Data Collections

Version 15

The most recent versions of the primary ICB data sets (Version 15) contain information for all crises occurring during the 1918-2019 period. The datasets include information on 496 international crises and 1,100 crisis actors. There are 35 protracted conflicts.

To give attribution of the data, we ask that users cite both the Brecher and Wilkenfeld (2000) A Study of Crisis book that describes the theoretical foundations for how the data can help us understand the nature of crisis behavior and the Brecher, Wilkenfeld, Beardsley, James and Quinn (2020) data codebook:

Brecher, Michael and Jonathan Wilkenfeld (1997). A Study of Crisis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Brecher, Michael, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, Patrick James and David Quinn (2023). International Crisis Behavior Data Codebook, Version 15. http://sites.duke.edu/icbdata/data-collections/

The data and codebooks can be downloaded from the following links:

The most recent version also includes a number of updates to earlier crises, which resulted from a systematic review of consistent coding practices. Details of these updates can be found in the release notes.

Crisis Summaries

The ICB Data Viewer contains the crisis summaries, snapshots of some of the key variable values for each crisis, and search capabilities.

Links to the summaries of all the ICB crises can also be found here: ICB Crisis Summaries

Near Crises

Iahknis and James (2019) have recently published a new dataset of “near crises,” which adds to our understanding of crisis escalation and crisis management.

Dyadic-Level Crisis Data

A crisis dyad is a pair of states satisfying each of the following three conditions: (1) both are members of the interstate system, (2) at least one of the states satisfies all three of the ICB necessary conditions for crisis involvement, and (3) at least one of the states has directed a hostile action against the other. Each case in this dataset represents an annual observation of each of the crisis dyads over the complete duration of their confrontation. For more information about the construction of this data set, as well as a comparison of crisis dyads to militarized interstate dispute dyads, see Hewitt (2003). Please note that the dyads are non-directional in the sense that the first actor is simply the actor with the smaller numerical ID.

  • Version 2.0 (released July 2003) and codebook (ZIP file): ICB Dyads 2.0
  • Updated and stripped-down version, for merging with Version 15 (CSV):  ICB Dyads v15

ICB Non-State Actor Data

Many crises in the ICB data involve non-state actors that are crucial to the perceptions of crisis by the state actors. This dataset, starting with the 1987 crises and coded forward, includes information about the non-state actors and their relationships with the crisis actors.

ICB Data Collections Archives

Please contact us for copies of the data files and codebooks for ICB versions 5.0 to 9.0.

Version 14

The previous version of the data and codebooks can be downloaded from the following links:

Version 13

Version 12

Version 11

Version 10

Crisis-Density Rivalries

The data collections available in this zipped file are the result of a research project to identify rivalries through the recurrence of international crisis between pairs of states (Hewitt, 2005, Journal of Peace Research) . ‘Crisis-density rivalries’ differ conceptually from protracted conflicts because they are defined strictly as dyadic interactions. For more information about this project, please consult Hewitt (2005).

Click here to download a compressed file (crisriv.zip) containing these six files:

  • readme.txt – A listing of all files contained in this compressed archive
  • codebook.rtf – A codebook that describes the contents of two data files.
  • rivallev.dat – contains information about all rivalries identified in the project (stored in a tab-delimited format)
  • rivallev.sav – contains information about all rivalries identified in the project (stored in a SPSS data file)
  • crsdydlv.dat – contains information about each crisis dyad from each of the identified rivalries (stored in a tab-delimited format)
  • crsdydlv.sav – contains information about each crisis dyad from each of the identified rivalries (stored in a SPSS data file)

One-Sided Crisis Data

A one-sided crisis is an international crisis in which one actor perceives itself to be in crisis by virtue of a verbal or physical act by an adversary, but where that adversary does not perceive itself to be in crisis mode. Using a previous version of the ICB data (covering the period 1918-1994), Hewitt and Wilkenfeld (1999) identified 109 one-sided crises. In that same study, Hewitt and Wilkenfeld found that crisis behavior in one-sided crises is significantly different from behavior in normal (or two-sided crises).

This data Set identifies whether a crisis was one-sided or not. Click here to download a compressed file containing these three files:

  • icb_1side.sav (SPSS for Windows 95)
  • icb_1side.dat (tab-delimited ASCII file)
  • 1sidecod.doc (Word 6.0 document containing codebook documentation)

For a PDF version (requires Adobe Acrobat) of the codebook, click here.