Method evidence record

Alliance Portfolio Similarity

Alliance portfolio similarity measures how alike two states' overall patterns of alliance commitments are. Each state has a 'portfolio' — the profile of defense pacts, neutrality agreements, ententes, or no tie it holds with every other state — and the similarity of two portfolios is summarized in a single dyadic score. Signorino and Ritter (1999) showed that the long-dominant Kendall's tau-b measure is flawed for this purpose and introduced the S-score as a better-behaved alternative. These scores are a standard proxy for shared interests and have been used to operationalize utilities in expected-utility models of war.

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Measuring Similarity of States' Alliance Portfolios

Taxonomic method record · process-pipeline / international-relations

Signorino, C. S., & Ritter, J. M. (1999). Tau-b or not Tau-b: Measuring the similarity of foreign policy positions. International Studies Quarterly, 43(1), 115–144. · DOI 10.1111/0020-8833.00113

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Related methods

Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.

Same method familyAlliance Network Analysismachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Used in the same domainExpected Utility Model of Warmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Same method familyForeign Policy Similarity Scoremachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.