Review of Mark R. Beissinger (2022): Revolutionary Episodes Dataset

Description

The Revolutionary Episodes Dataset was created by Mark R. Beissinger and lists 345 revolutionary episodes in the time period from 1900 to 2014 from around the world (1). The research team defined a revolutionary episode as “a mass siege of an established government by its own population with the aim of displacing the incumbent regime and substantially altering the political or social order.” (Beissinger 2022: 5). Each of these revolutionary episodes do however require a peak mobilization of at least 1.000 civilian participants to be included in this dataset (Beissinger 2022: 10).
Of the 406 total entries in this dataset, there are 30+ events listed for the countries of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia covered by Discuss Data. According to Beissinger the plan is to update and revise the dataset in future iterations (Beissinger 2022: 13).
The data review contains a link leading to the official Revolutionary Episodes Dataset website from which both the dataset, the codebook and additional information are available as a free download.

Countries

Azerbaijan Belarus Estonia Georgia Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lithuania Moldova Other Russia Tajikistan Ukraine USSR

Keywords

Protests Politics Regime Change Revolution Siege

Language of data

English

Methods of data collection

Desk Research Event Data Text Coding