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AbstractState emergence is an essential dynamic of the international system, yet international relations scholars pay it little attention. Their oversight is all the more unfortunate because international politics ultimately determine which aspiring system members will succeed in becoming new states. Existing models of state emergence rely exclusively on internal or domestic-level explanations. However, the international system is inherently social; therefore any aspiring state's membership also depends on the acceptance of its peers. I present a novel, international-level model of state birth that suggests state leaders should use decisions regarding new members strategically to advance their own interests, not passively abide by domestic factors. I test this argument using a new data set on secessionism and Great Power recognition (1931–2000). I find that external politics have important, underappreciated effects on state emergence. Furthermore, acknowledging the politics of recognition's centrality to state birth alters our understanding of civil conflict dynamics and conflict resolution and suggests important implications for system-wide stability.

A developed-world consensus ties state failure to new and serious international insecurity. But that conclusion rests upon an uncertain foundation; insights into the nature and intensity of failure-related threats remain tentative and unsystematic. This study begins to remedy the problem, examining the broad relationships between weakness, failure, and terrorism with panel data for 153 countries (1999–2008). I argue that the quantitative literature too often disregards the political context determining terrorism's use, that terrorism is endogenous to many measures of state failure, and that estimates of the failure-related threat of terrorism are overstated. Consistent with these expectations, I find that most failing and failed states are not predisposed to terrorism. However, among the "most failed" states, those at war or experiencing political collapse are significantly more likely to experience and produce terror. These results refine the relationship between failure and external threat and highlight the importance of terrorism's macro-level political context.

This article introduces the Maritime Piracy Data (MPD), a dataset dedicated to understanding the nature, dynamics, and causes of contemporary piracy and armed robbery against ships. Data on maritime piracy are presented in two formats: an event set and an annual, country-level set. The event data track every maritime piracy attack reported to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center (IMB/PRC) for a total of 3,413 events between 2000 and 2009. Entries provide event details including date, geo-coded location, attacker nationality, victim nationality, success, vessel type, violence level, loot taken, and/or ransom demanded. The annual data count the number of piracy events emanating from the world's 147 coastal countries over the same decade for a total of 1,470 observations. Entries include country-level information regarding the maritime sector including coastal shipping traffic, coastline length, seaports, distances to major sea lane chokepoints, and merchant marine size. The article describes the main features of the data, provides descriptive statistics, and briefly illustrates their potential utility for research. The MPD has potential utility for scholars examining non-traditional threats generated by non-state actors; for those studying the potential relationships between governance and conflict on land and piracy at sea; and for individuals engaged in policy-relevant analyses evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of counter-piracy strategies and tactics.