Diplomatic Recognition of Taiwan (the Republic of China) From 1950-2007

Diplomatic recognition is generally seen as fundamental to the modern state system. While traditional studies of recognition focus on political or ideological rationales and presume a level of stability in diplomatic recognition, in the diplomatic battle between Taiwan and China neither of these assumptions hold. This is, to my knowledge, the only attempt to quantify diplomatic recognition and covers 1950-2007 for all independent sovereign nations. The paper generated from this dataset "Status for Sale: Taiwan, and the Competition for Diplomatic Recognition" finds that, counter to conventional wisdom, economic factors dictate whether a country recognizes Taiwan and that levels of democracy and other commonly proposed factors in the qualitative literature fail to reach significance.