Scientific necessity and political utility: A comparison of data on violent conflicts

Data making in the social sciences in general, data collection on interstate and intrastate violence in particular, is not only a necessity for the growth of knowledge but also potentially useful for practice. The latter is only true if the data satisfy specific criteria. As we argue for that latter purpose a process perspective on violence is needed given the severe limitations of a structural approach. Several datasets on internal and external lower and higher levels of violence are compared. As the results show each dataset portrays a different world of violence. It does not make a difference whether qualitative or quantitative criteria are used to identify violent events. Most of the datasets are limited in their use for the analysis of the dynamics of violence. One of the conclusions is that greater efforts should be invested in reaching a consensus about the data rather than spending time and money in constructing new datasets.