Tracking organizations in the world: The Correlates of War IGO Version 3.0 datasets

Abstract

This article summarizes the Correlates of War Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO) Version 3.0 datasets. The new datasets include information about the population of IGOs in the international system and state participation in those formal international institutions from 1816 to 2014. Consistent with Versions 2.0 and 2.3, Version 3.0 of the IGO data comes in three forms: country-year, IGO-year, and joint dyadic membership. This article briefly describes the data collection process and identifies important changes to the dataset before moving to analyze fundamental patterns in the data. Most notable among the changes from earlier versions of the data is the inclusion of annual membership data for the 1815–1964 time period. In addition, we present information about the overall trends in the institutionalization of cooperation at both the global and regional levels, with the latter focusing on the interesting membership dynamics in Asia and Africa. We then track and discuss patterns in state memberships and examine how these changes manifest in the dyadic data. The article concludes with a discussion of how the COW IGO 3.0 data compare to other prominent datasets on state participation in international institutions and highlights some new areas of research that will benefit from the release of the updated IGO membership dataset.

Institutional design for a post-liberal order: why some international organizations live longer than others

“…To test these hypotheses, we compiled data on institutional flexibility, institutionalization, and bureaucratic size for 150 IOs for the timespan 1815-2014. We also recoded failure events in the COW IGO dataset v3.0 (Pevehouse et al, 2020) to separate more clearly between failure due to death, replacement, or integration.…”

“…Our data on the dependent variables are based on COW IGO v3.0 (Pevehouse et al, 2020). We work with a random stratified sample of 150 out of all 534 IOs that is representative of policy fields and regional distribution (for a list of included IOs, see Table C, Online Appendix).…”

“…The ultimate way for states to show that international institutions have outlived their purpose is to disband them. This is not a new phenomenon: no less than 39% of the international organizations (IOs) (218 out of 561) created since 1815 have ceased to exist (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2020; see also Pevehouse et al, 2020).…”

Hello, goodbye: When do states withdraw from international organizations?

“…Further, the Convention recognizes that a member state may withdraw due to a 'fundamental change in circumstances' which 'constituted an essential basis of the consent of the parties to be bound by the treaty.' These provisions mean that if a state wishes to withdraw from an IGO, it can do so 21 Pevehouse et al 2019. In the conclusion we suggest ways that this IGO definition might matter, and possibilities for future research to examine exits from other forms of international cooperation.…”

Cooperation under autonomy: Building and analyzing the Informal Intergovernmental Organizations 2.0 dataset

“…We coded each IIGO's central issue area using the three categories (Politics, Economics, and Social Affairs) in the most recent COW dataset (Pevehouse et. al.…”