International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project: Overview
Origins
The past 4 decades have been a period of intense research concentration on international crises, that is, international political earthquakes, and interstate conflicts. From the outset it was apparent that the ICB project would become an ambitious, demanding, and rewarding exploration, in depth and breadth, of a large segment of the IR field: it encompassed the study of interstate military-security crises and protracted conflicts on a scale that, as the project unfolded, seemed awesome: timeāthe twentieth century since the end of World War I, November 1918, into the first 15 years of the twenty-first century (ICB dataset, Version 12); geographic scopeāall states in the global system during that near-century; and contentāfrom the eruption of crises, their escalation, de-escalation through attempts at successful crisis management, to the outcome and consequences of all international and foreign policy crises for all states. That project is now 42 years old but is still flourishing, measured by the number of scholars and students engaged in ICB research and the flow of publications, books, and articles. The origins of this project were closely linked to earlier periods and topics of my research. After more than two decades on a select number of crises and conflicts in two volatile regionsāfrom the India/Pakistan conflict over Kashmir (1947) to the Arab/Israel October-Yom Kippur crisis-war (1973ā1974)āthe time seemed ripe to launch an inquiry into crises, conflicts, and wars in the world at large over an extended period of time. The result was my initiation of the ICB project in 1975.
Its aims were ambitious. One was to generate comprehensive datasets on foreign policy and international crises in the twentieth century, for none existed at the time, unlike the closely related phenomenon of war. The other was to frame and test a unified model of international crisis and crisis behavior. Both proved to be demanding tasks on a vast scale.
The few persons consulted, in 1974ā1975, before taking the plunge, were skeptical, particularly of the ambitious scope of the project, which, they cautioned, could take decades; it did, with the end not yet in sight. Perhaps they were right; they certainly proved to be correct about the time frame. Their views were considered, with great care; but in the end, declined, and the saga began. (The evolution of this project, its publications, and major findings thus far, will be presented later in this book.)
Colleagues, Coders and Advisers
Since 1977, Jonathan Wilkenfeld has been my closest ICB colleague during what has become a very long-term research phase. Jonathan and I differ in many respects: educational background (McGill-Yale and Maryland-Indiana); research skills and methodological dispositions ( qualitative, case study and quantitative, aggregate data analysis); an age difference, 17 years; physical distanceāwe lived on two continents and in three countries, Canada/Israel and the U.S. during virtually the entire history of the ICB Project , and most of it was before the coming of e-mail, and temperament. We learned a great deal from each other, with mutual respect. This cooperative endeavor facilitated a multi-method study of crises and conflicts in world politics. Our close collaborationāand our friendshipācontinues undiminished and unimpaired after 40 years!
In the early 1980s, we were joined by Patrick James, a very talented former Ph. D student of Jon Wilkenfeld, who has made major contributions to the concepts, models, and methods of the ICB project and has become a high-profile, accomplished IR scholar, serving as President of the International Studies Association (ISA) and Peace Science Society in 2018ā2019.
The ICB project also benefited from a vibrant and stimulating group of colleagues and graduate students in three universities in three statesāMcGill, University of Maryland, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It also had the good fortune of attracting many eager and committed research assistants in the seemingly endless task of creating reliable datasets of international crises , foreign policy crises , and protracted conflicts: for the initial, longest research period, 1929ā1979āit took more than a decade, 1975ā1987āHemda Ben Yehuda, Gerald Bichunski, Diana Brecher, Ofra Einav, Robert Einav, Alex Forma, Etel Goldmann/Solingen, Sharon Greenblatt, Rutie Moser, Hanan Naveh, Arie Ofri, Lily Polliak, Mordechai Raz, Michel Reichman, AndrĆ© Rosenthal, Joel Schleicher, Bruce Slawitsky, and Sarah Vertzberger (in Jerusalem); and Mark Boyer, Doreen Duffy, Steve Hill, Patrick James, Cindy Kite, Maureen Latimer, Eileen Long (in Maryland); for the period, 1980ā1985, Joel Schleicher (in Jerusalem), Brigid Starkey and Alice Schott (in Maryland); for the periods, 1918ā1928 and 1985ā1994, Tod Hoffman, Eric Laferriere, Michelle Lebrun, Mark Peranson, and Michael Vasko (at McGill); and Ronit Lupu, Iris Margulies, Meirav Mishali, Noam Shultz, and Sarah Vertzberger (in Jerusalem), and, from 1995ā2015, Kyle Beardsley, David M. Quinn, and Pelin Erlap (at Maryland).
Many scholars gave generously of their time and knowledge as regional specialists, with many benefits to the ICB project: Douglas Anglin, Naomi Hazan, and Saadia Touval (on Africa) ; Alexander de Barros, Thomas Bruneau, Nelson Kasfir, Jorge Dominguez, and Edy Kaufman (on the Americas); Ehud Harari, Ellis Joffe, Paul Kattenburg, Guy Pauker, Leo Rose, Martin Rudner, Yaakov Vertzberger, and George T.C. Yu (on Asia); Luigi Bonanate, Karen Dawisha, Galia Golan, Kjell Goldmann, Amnon Sella, and Robert Vogel (on Europe); and Richard H. Dekmejian, Alan Dowty, Benjamin Geist, Jacob Landau, and Yaakov Shimoni (on the Middle East).
Rationale and Methods
Like other scholars immersed in IR research, the senior ICB scholars have a longstanding policy interest, that is, a wish and hope that our findings on crisis, conflict , and war, especially on how decision-makers behave under (often escalating) stress, might make a contribution in the quest for a more tranquil world, through advice on conflict resolution and even on war prevention. We had no illusions that the contribution would be decisive. But we didāand doāplace a high value on trying to ābridge the gapā between academe and the decision-makersā world.
The ICB approach to the systematic study of crisis, conflict , and war derived from a deep commitment to pluralism in the quest for knowledge, that is, to complementary, not competing methodologies: this commitment to pluralism is not confined to the issue of qualitative vs. quantitative methods . It includes recognition of the merit of both deductive and inductive approaches to theory-building. And it extends to a focus on both large N and small N datasets: ICB has producedāand utilizedāboth types in its multifaceted inquiry.
ICB began with a single-state foreign policy crisis ...