Mapping coercive institutions: The State Security Forces dataset, 1960–2010

Abstract

How rulers organize and use their security forces is thought to have important implications for regime survival, repression, and military effectiveness. While a number of studies provide insight into the coercive institutions of individual states, efforts to understand systematic patterns have been hampered by a lack of reliable data on state security forces that can be compared across states and within them over time. This article presents the State Security Forces (SSF) dataset, which includes 375 security forces in 110 countries, 1960–2010. It tracks how each force is commanded, staffed, equipped, and deployed, as well as the number of security forces and potential counterweights in each state’s security sector as a whole. After illustrating how the SSF dataset differs from related ones and presenting descriptive trends, the article shows how it can be used to deepen our understanding of coup-proofing and strategic substitution, and identifies additional research uses of the dataset.