Labor Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa Dataset (MENALC)

The Labor Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENALC) Dataset, represents one of the largest and most comprehensive efforts to catalogue events of labor conflict and unrest in the Middle East/North Africa region. Future iterations of the project will expand the dataset to cover a wide-range of autocratic countries in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

Designed to augment policymakers' and researchers' ability to analyze labor mobilization patterns, the MENALC dataset contains information on protests, sit-ins, strikes, and other public demonstrations perpetrated by unions and union affiliates in the MENA region. MENALC currently includes information on over 3500 labor protest events from 1980 to 2011.

Each event record contains information about the timing, location and magnitude of labor protest events as well as descriptions regarding the actors, targets, issues of contention and government responses. While other protest datasets contain information on social conflict events more generally, the purpose of this dataset is to gather information specifically related to labor movements in order to allow researchers to catalogue their protest activities and collective mobilization efforts. 

MENALC is directed by Ashley Anderson (UNC - Chapel Hill) and has been funded by generous grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Harvard University Weatherhead Center, Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), and the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS). To access these data, please send a formal inquiry to Ashley at the following address: aaanders@email.unc.edu

CODEBOOK

The complete codebook is available here. 

Contentious Mobilization in Egypt Dataset (CMED)

The Contentious Mobilization in Egypt Dataset (CMED) records all reported protest events occurring in Egypt from Jan 1, 2011 to June 3, 2013. Unlike many other datasets on contentious action, the CMED dataset catalogues information on both opposition and pro-state protests, making it one of the most thorough catalogs of protest behavior during the time period analyzes. 

Following the coding conventions established in the European Protest and Coercion Dataset, each event record contains information about the timing, location and magnitude of protest events as well as descriptions regarding the actors, targets, and protester demands. Data is sourced from English-language news available on Lexis-Nexis. In the future, efforts to expand the dataset will include incorporating local Arabic-language news and expanding data collection to other countries in the Middle East. 

CMED is directed by Ashley Anderson (UNC - Chapel Hill) and Melani Cammett (Harvard University). To access this data , please send a formal inquiry to Ashley at the following address: aaanders@email.unc.edu

CODEBOOK

The complete codebook is available here.