Practices and outcomes of humanitarian military interventions: a new data set

Despite abundant debates on humanitarian military interventions, there is yet little empirical knowledge about these operations and their effects due to a lack of systematized data. To stimulate the necessary comparative research, this article introduces a new data set on all humanitarian military interventions between 1946 and 2015. The data set outlines the interveners’ proclaimed aims, mandates, and activities. Documentation of events in the target countries prior to, during, and after the interventions facilitates their evaluation. The data set consists of data matrices and structured case descriptions that document all coding decisions. A review of the spatial and temporal distribution of interveners and interventions refutes the prevalent view that the vast majority of humanitarian military interventions are conducted by Western states and that such missions subsided after the interventions in Afghanistan and Libya. The data set enables a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research. Despite its limited number of cases, it can reveal whether humanitarian military interventions generally decrease the duration and intensity of violence. Among other applications, it can help identify the conditions under which such interventions lead to an escalation or de-escalation of deadly violence.