Replication data for: Covenants Without the Sword: International Law and the Protection of Civilians in Times of War

In a statistical analysis of all interstate wars from 1900 to 2003 the authors find no evidence that signatories of The Hague or Geneva Conventions intentionally kill fewer civilians during war than do non-signatories. This result holds for democratic signatories and for wars in which both sides are parties to the treaty.

Nor do they find evidence that a state's regime type or the existence of ethnic or religious differences between combatants explains the variation in civilian targeting. They find strong support, however, for their theoretical framework, which suggests that combatants seek to kill enemy civilians when they believe that doing so will coerce their adversaries into early surrender or undermine their adversaries' war-related domestic production.