During the shift to using a large-n approach to research, I found complications in finding data sets to help research the question I was asking. My question shifted to ask what explains the trend in needing recognition to be considered a state. Through researching various databases, I was able to find a few sources that would help me be able to unpack my question better. I decided to use years as a state system member as my dependent variable to help explain the stability of the state. The idea behind this was to see if there was any correlation in the stability of a state compared to how long they have been considered a member of the state system.
The first dataset I located is from the Correlates of War Project database that focuses on State System Membership.[1] The data measures from 1816 year-by-year of what states have been included as part of the state system. A state is considered part of the state system before 1920 if they have a population greater than 500,000 and have diplomatic missions at or above rank with Britain and England. Post-1920 they must be a member of the League of Nations or UN or have a population of more than 500,000 and have diplomatic missions from two major powers. This can be beneficial especially when seeing large amounts of new states being entered such as in post-World War II and collapse of the Soviet Union. The limitations are that the data can be somewhat limited in the considerations of the state system as the data could be differentiated heavily if the conditions were ever so slightly tweaked.
Another resource I wanted to use was the Fragile State Index Report of 2016.[2] This report uses different analytics to a sum of scores from twelve separate indicators that can show a state’s strengths and weakness. They are rated on a scale of 1 to 10 and are divided into social, economic, and political categories. The data in 2016 covers 176 states, and I choose the 2016 report specifically because that is when the date ended for the Correlates of War Project database. The limitations of this source are that it focuses entirely on almost the negative aspects of state-building. Even the title implies that almost all states are fragile, it is limited including methods of state building and time period.
[1] “State System Membership (V2016) — Correlates of War.” n.d. Folder. Accessed October 15, 2018. http://www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/state-system-membership.
[2] Fragile States Index 2016 – Annual Report | Fragile States Index.” n.d. Accessed October 15, 2018. http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/2016/06/27/fragile-states-index-2016-annual-report/.