Improving the EUGene Software Program

Understanding international conflict (as well as international interactions more generally) remains a critical task for social scientists. EUGene is a Microsoft Windows-based software program that scholars may use to build quantitative data sets in order to analyze international politics, particularly international conflict. The software is designed to be useful both by experts and novice data analysts. It assists in data preparation by handling data management tasks that are cumbersome and difficult, and merging data from a variety of input data sets with differing formats into uniform output data sets according to user- specified choices. The software facilitates additional research by faculty, graduate students, and scholars-at-large by managing many cumbersome and time-consuming tasks, freeing up time that can be spent on more productive research tasks (namely theory development and data analysis). It also provides a common (and free) software infrastructure for dataset development by international relations analysts. EUGene is available for free download to the research community.

Broader Value: EUGene has become widely used by scholars using quantitative data to study the causes and consequences of international conflict. In this expansion, the investigator will add another unit of analysis to the program, add additional conflict (war) data, expand available risk attitude data, reformat and present additional alliance data, and continue to add new user data sets. The new version will provide an improved software tool to the research community, particularly for those examining the expansion and escalation of interstate conflict, and analyzing interstate disputes.