SHERFACS: A Cross-Paradigm, Hierarchical, and Contextually-Sensitive International Conflict Dataset, 1937-1985

The SHERFACS data collection measures political conflict from 1937 through 1985 and identifies some 700 international disputes and 1,000 domestic quarrels. SHERFACS is the culmination of a long line of quantitative studies of international conflict management (the name SHERFACS derives from the name of the principal investigator, Sherman, and the initials of the collaborators on a predecessor dataset: Farris, Alker, Carley, and Sherman). Beginning with the work of Ernst Haas, efforts have been made to expand the focus of conflict management studies to a larger set of management agents and issues. SHERFACS has expanded the study of conflict management in highly significant ways: it models the internal conflict dynamics of escalation and de-escalation (Part 1, Case Overview Data, and Part 2, Phase Structure Data), identifies specific categories of actor behavior (Part 3, Party Actions Within Phases Data), relates the referral or agenda processes of conflict management agents (Part 4, Referrals to Management Agents Data), and specifies the actions taken by the management agents (Part 5, Management Agent Actions Data). An important addition is the inclusion of conflicts that have been considered to be essentially domestic in origin. SHERFACS provides an attempt to enfold the micro-measurement of traditional events datasets within a framework that is contextually sensitive to narrative presentation. The SHERFACS project updates and expands an earlier data collection effort, INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT EPISODES, 1945-1979 (ICPSR 8303).