【英文】兰德报告：建立军事联盟，美国的经验教训（316页）

英文研究报告 2021年12月22日 07:39 管理员

This chapter summarizes our methodological approach to assessing the three research questions described in Chapter Two. As described, the foundation of the analysis in this report is a dataset of 37 coalition interventions that included the United States, spanning the period from 1946 to 2018. We were able to leverage a larger dataset of U.S. military interventions that also included unilateral interventions conducted over this same period. For each coalition, we recorded information on the number of partners, the size and nature of that partner’s involvement, and the duration of involvement. Where possible, we also captured information on national caveats on the use of forces. Our data also included information on whether an IGO sponsored or led the coalition and on the activities conducted by the coalition and by the partner, which often overlap.

We discussed the qualitative and quantitative methods that we combined to assess each hypothesis specified in Chapter Two. Although our analysis of most hypotheses draws from both methods, some we could only assess using one approach or the other. In terms of quantitative analysis, each of our research questions requires a different type of model and a slightly different dataset. This chapter also describes each approach, including the variables used in each model. We provide additional detail on the data in Appendixes A and B and on the quantitative methodologies in Appendix C. Finally, we discuss our approach to case selection and then the ultimate selection of case studies for the qualitative analysis. We chose a broadly representative set of data that could provide a diverse set of insights to address our research questions.