README
Authors: Stephen Feagin, Nate Grubman, Stephen Herzog
Date: December 18, 2015
This repository contains source code for a replication of Jessica Weeks (2012), "Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict," American Political Science Review 106, no. 02 (May): 326-347.
This project was conducted for PLSC 504: Advanced Quantitative Methods, at Yale University.
The repository contains data files, R markdown files and output for the base replication, and the source code for the final paper.
Because I am excluding .pdf files from the repository, I include in this README the text of the file "Coauthorship and Responsibilities for Term Paper" in order to properly attribute the work that my coauthors and I did.
In the initial commit, I submit the code exactly as it was submitted for the course assignment. In future commits, I may clean up formatting to make it more readable. However, I will not substantively change any of the analysis.
Co-authorship and Responsibilities for Term Paper
Stephen Feagin contributed to sections 1, 2, and 3 of the paper and is the primary author of the paper’s appendix. Stephen was responsible for developing the bulk of figures used throughout this paper. He also developed code, alongside Nate, to analyze Weeks’s models and was responsible for the calculation of robust standard errors and the data analysis of historical regime type counts.
Nate Grubman was the lead author on sections 1 and 2 of the paper, a contributing author to section 3, and played a strong role in editing and making additions throughout the rest of the paper. Additionally, Nate spearheaded much of the initial heavy-lifting and data analysis for Weeks’s first, parsimonious model. He worked with the rest of the team to ensure that coding for Models 1 and 2 worked and could be analyzed properly. Nate then implemented the placebo test used in this paper.
Stephen Herzog contributed to sections 1, 2, and 3 of the paper. He is the primary author of the textual sections 4 and 5 of the paper, which are the summary and interpretation of data, as well as the theoretical conclusions. Further, Stephen was responsible for adapting the team’s initial analysis coding for Weeks’s parsimonious model to her second, full model in order to run comparative regressions.
Beyond individual responsibilities, the three authors contributed equally to the theoretical development and research design of this project. Before they began the added-variable analysis, the authors replicated Weeks’s original code together.