Resources

An excellent first stop for browsing data relevant to international relations research. Highly recommended for getting a sense of what datasets are available.

The primary repository for conflict data in IR, including interstate wars, militarized interstate disputes, alliances, trade, and more.

Data on U.S. military troop deployments and overseas basing, 1950–present. Available as an R package with full documentation.

The world’s largest open-access repository for social science research data. Essential for finding replication data for published articles.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research — a major archive of social science data covering politics, economics, health, and more.

Comprehensive data on democratic institutions and regime characteristics for virtually every country, 1789–present.

Long-running dataset on regime authority characteristics and transitions for all independent states, 1800–present.

Peace Research Institute Oslo — datasets on armed conflict, battle deaths, geography of conflict, and more.

Comprehensive cross-national economic, social, and development indicators for most countries and years.

Free access to constituency-level election results for over 100 countries, including votes for small parties and candidates.

Detailed lower house legislative election results at the constituency level from countries around the world.

High-quality data on U.S. voting, public opinion, and political participation since 1948.

The successor to The Monkey Cage, founded by John Sides in 2023. Political scientists draw on their expertise to provide in-depth, evidence-based analysis of current events. Free, independent, and no paywall.

A leading IR blog with commentary from scholars on international politics, foreign policy, and world affairs.

Expert commentary on conflict, terrorism, and political violence from leading researchers in the field.

A political science blog focused on quantitative and formal approaches to peace and conflict research.

Academic researchers writing for a general audience on current political events. Useful for seeing how scholars communicate outside the journal format.

The flagship journal of the American Political Science Association and the most prestigious outlet in the discipline across all subfields.

The flagship journal of the International Studies Association, covering all major subfields of international relations.

Leading journal on the causes and consequences of international and intrastate conflict, with a strong quantitative emphasis.

Peer-reviewed journal affiliated with the Peace Science Society (International), covering international conflict, arms races, foreign policy decision-making, and game-theoretic approaches.

Journal of the International Studies Association focused on foreign policy decision-making, public opinion, and the domestic sources of international behavior.

Quantitatively-oriented journal covering international relations theory, conflict, cooperation, and foreign policy.

Published by PRIO, covering peace and conflict research with a strong empirical and policy-relevant focus.

Methods-focused journal covering quantitative, qualitative, and formal approaches across all subfields of political science.

The main professional organization for political scientists in the US. Hosts the annual conference, publishes APSR and PS, and manages eJobs for the academic job market.

The leading professional organization for IR scholars. The annual conference is a key venue for presenting research on international relations and foreign policy.

Encourages development of peace analysis and conflict management research. Publishes Conflict Management and Peace Science and holds an annual conference.

Regional political science association with a large annual conference in Chicago. An excellent venue for graduate students to present and receive feedback on work in progress.

Professional society for quantitative methodologists in political science. Hosts the annual PolMeth conference and maintains resources for methods training.

One of the most influential policy research organizations in the US, covering foreign policy, governance, economics, and security.

A leading think tank and publisher of Foreign Affairs. The CFR website offers extensive background reports on countries, regions, and foreign policy issues.

Independent institute with extensive free databases on military expenditure, arms transfers, arms industry, and peacekeeping operations.

Major policy research organization covering national security, defense, and international affairs. Publishes extensive open-access research reports.

Global network of policy research centers covering democracy, nuclear policy, energy, and regional geopolitics.

Kieran Healy’s essential guide to reproducible research workflows using R, LaTeX, and plain text tools. Highly recommended for graduate students building sustainable research habits.

A collaborative online LaTeX editor. Useful for co-authoring manuscripts and for students learning LaTeX without a local installation.

The essential tool for tracking citations, finding related work, and monitoring who is citing your own research. Set up email alerts for your name and key topics.

Free, open-source reference manager. The standard tool for organizing citations and generating bibliographies. Works with Word, LibreOffice, and LaTeX.

A free platform for pre-registering studies, sharing data, and posting preprints. Increasingly expected for transparent, reproducible research in the social sciences.

Social Science Research Network — a major repository for working papers and preprints in political science, economics, and law. Useful for sharing work before journal publication.

Political scientists discussing their research and its implications for current events. A natural complement to the Good Authority blog.

In-depth conversations with leading scholars and policymakers on international relations, foreign policy, and global affairs.

National security, defense policy, and international affairs analysis from practitioners and scholars. One of the most listened-to IR podcasts in policy circles.

In-depth coverage of national security law, foreign policy, and the intersection of law and international affairs.

Interviews with leading scholars on international security, conflict, and foreign policy. Hosted by researchers at the European University Institute.

Explores formal theory and international relations, connecting game-theoretic approaches to real-world political dynamics.

Hosted by the Niskanen Center, featuring political scientists discussing their research on American politics, elections, and public policy.

A podcast bringing political science research to bear on contemporary political events and debates.

Two political scientists — Greg Hancock and Patrick Curran — discuss quantitative methods, statistics, and research design in an accessible and entertaining format. Essential for methods students.

Lucy D’Agostino McGowan and Ellie Murray discuss causal inference, epidemiology, and research methods. Highly relevant for quantitative social scientists.

Russ Roberts interviews economists and social scientists on economics, policy, and ideas. One of the longest-running and most respected social science podcasts.

NPR’s economics podcast explaining complex economic ideas through compelling storytelling. Excellent for understanding the intersection of economics and politics.

Short daily episodes on economics and business from the Planet Money team. Good for staying current on economic developments relevant to IPE research.

Stephen Dubner applies economic thinking to surprising topics in politics, society, and human behavior. Useful for illustrating social science concepts to students.

Shankar Vedantam explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior using psychology and social science research.

Jennifer Doleac interviews researchers on the empirical study of crime, law, and policy. Heavy focus on causal inference and natural experiments — highly relevant for quantitative social scientists.

Gary Arndt covers history, geography, and culture from around the world in short daily episodes. Useful for building general knowledge of world regions and history.

Alie Ward interviews scientists and researchers about their fields. Broad scientific literacy podcast useful for understanding research methods across disciplines.

Cara Santa Maria interviews scientists on their research and its societal implications. Covers a wide range of fields including social and political science.

A close reading podcast on game studies scholarship. Directly relevant to The Gamer’s Guide to International Relations and the intersection of games and political science.

Explores political scandals and their consequences, connecting historical and contemporary cases to broader themes in political science.

The Santa Fe Institute’s podcast on complexity science, covering emergence, networks, and nonlinear dynamics across social and natural systems.

BBC Radio 4 podcast hosted by Laurie Taylor discussing sociological research and its relevance to everyday life and society.

Free, open-source statistical computing environment. The dominant software in political science and the social sciences more broadly. Use with RStudio for a more convenient interface.

The standard IDE for working in R. Makes coding, visualization, and document creation significantly easier than working in base R.

Commercial statistical software widely used in economics and political science. Well-maintained with excellent documentation and textbooks covering most common estimators.

A LaTeX editor for producing professional academic documents and manuscripts. My current preferred LaTeX compiler.

A modern publishing system built on R Markdown that supports R, Python, and Julia. Excellent for reproducible research, presentations, and academic websites.

GUI software for compiling COW, Polity, and other datasets into dyadic and non-dyadic units of analysis. Useful for IR students building their first datasets.

Version control for your research code and data. Increasingly expected for replication submissions. GitHub is the standard hosting platform.