Packages we will need:

library(peacesciencer)  
library(forcats)
library(ggflags)
library(tidyverse)
library(magrittr)
library(waffle)
library(bbplot)
library(rvest)

In January 2015, the Irish government published a review of Ireland’s foreign policy. The document, The Global Island: Ireland’s Foreign Policy for a Changing World offers a perspective on Ireland’s place in the world.

In this blog, we will graph out some of the key features of Ireland’ foreign policy and so we can have a quick overview of the key relationships and trends.

First, we will look at the aid that Ireland gives to foreign countries. This read.csv(file.choose()) will open up the file window and you can navigate to the file and data that you can download from DAC OECD website: https://data.oecd.org/oda/net-oda.htm

dac <- read.csv(file.choose())

We will filter only Ireland and clean the names with the clean_names() function from the janitor package:

dac %<>% 
  filter(Donor == "Ireland") %>% 
  clean_names()

And change the variables, adding the Correlates of War codes and cleaning up some of the countries’ names.

dac %<>% 
  mutate(cown = countrycode(recipient_2, "country.name", "cown"),
         aid_amount = value*1000000) %>%  
  select(country = recipient_2, cown,
         year, time, aid_type, value, aid_amount) %>%
  mutate(cown = ifelse(country == "West Bank and Gaza Strip", 6666,
         ifelse(country == "Serbia", 345, 
         ifelse(country == "Micronesia", 987,cown))))%>%
  filter(!is.na(cown)) 

Next we can convert dataframe to wider format so we have a value column for each aid type

dac %>% 
  distinct(country, cown, year, time, aid_type, value, .keep_all = TRUE)  %>%  
  pivot_wider(names_from = "aid_type", values_from = "aid_amount") %>% 
  mutate(across(where(is.numeric), ~ replace_na(., 0))) %>% 
  clean_names() -> dac_wider

And we graph out the three main types of aid:

dac_wider %>%
  group_by(year) %>% 
  summarise(total_humanitarian = sum(humanitarian_aid, na.rm = TRUE),
  total_technical = sum(technical_cooperation, na.rm = TRUE),
  total_development_food_aid = sum(development_food_aid)) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  pivot_longer(!year, names_to = "aid_type", values_to = "aid_value") %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = year, y = aid_value, groups = aid_type)) + 
  geom_line(aes(color = aid_type), size = 2, show_guide  = FALSE) +
  geom_point(aes(color = aid_type), fill = "white", shape = 21, size = 3, stroke = 2) +
  bbplot::bbc_style()  +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::comma) + 
  scale_x_discrete(limits = c(2010:2018)) +
  labs(title = "Irish foreign aid by aid type (2010 - 2018)",
       subtitle = ("Source: OECD DAC")) +
  scale_color_discrete(name = "Aid type", 
        labels = c("Development and Food", "Humanitarian", "Technical"))

We will look at total ODA aid:

dac %>% 
  count(aid_type) %>% 
  arrange(desc(n)) %>% 
  knitr::kable(format = "html")

aid_type	n
Imputed Multilateral ODA	2298
Memo: ODA Total, excl. Debt	1292
Memo: ODA Total, Gross disbursements	1254
ODA: Total Net	1249
Grants, Total	1203
Technical Cooperation	541
ODA per Capita	532
Humanitarian Aid	518
ODA as % GNI (Recipient)	504
Development Food Aid	9

And get some pretty hex colours:

pal_10 <- c("#001219","#005f73","#0a9396","#94d2bd","#e9d8a6","#ee9b00","#ca6702","#bb3e03","#ae2012","#9b2226")

And download some regime, democracy, region and continent data from the PACL datase with the democracyData() package

pacl <- redownload_pacl() 

pacl %<>% 
  mutate(regime_name = ifelse(regime == 0, "Parliamentary democracies",
         ifelse(regime == 1, "Mixed democracies",
         ifelse(regime == 2, "Presidential democracies",
         ifelse(regime == 3, "Civilian autocracies",
         ifelse(regime == 4, "Military dictatorships",
         ifelse(regime ==  5,"Royal dictatorships", regime))))))) %>%
  mutate(regime = as.factor(regime)) 

pacl %<>% 
  select(year, country = pacl_country, 
         democracy, regime_name,
         region_name = un_region_name, 
         continent_name = un_continent_name)

pacl %<>% 
  mutate(cown = countrycode(country, "country.name", "cown")) %>% 
  select(!country)

Summarise the total aid for each country across the years and choose the top 20 countries

dac %>% 
  filter(aid_type == "Memo: ODA Total, Gross disbursements") %>% 
  group_by(country) %>% 
  summarise(total_country_aid = sum(aid_amount, na.rm = TRUE)) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  top_n(n = 20) %>% 
  mutate(cown = countrycode::countrycode(country, "country.name", "cown")) %>% 
  inner_join(pacl, by = "cown") %>%  
  mutate(region_name = ifelse(country == "West Bank and Gaza Strip", "Western Asia", region_name)) %>% 
  mutate(region_name = ifelse(region_name == "Western Asia", "Middle East", region_name)) %>% 
  mutate(country = ifelse(country == "West Bank and Gaza Strip", "Palestine",
  ifelse(country == "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "DR Congo",
  ifelse(country == "Syrian Arab Republic", "Syria", country)))) %>% 
  mutate(iso2 = tolower(countrycode::countrycode(country, "country.name", "iso2c"))) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = forcats::fct_reorder(country, total_country_aid), y = total_country_aid)) + 
  geom_bar(aes(fill = region_name), stat = "identity", width = 0.7) + 
  coord_flip() + bbplot::bbc_style() + 
  geom_flag(aes(x = country, y = -100, country = iso2), size = 12) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = pal_10) +
  labs(title = "Ireland's largest ODA foreign aid recipients, 2010 - 2018",
       subtitle = ("Source: OECD DAC")) + 
  xlab("") + ylab("") + 
  scale_x_continuous(labels = scales::comma)

We can make a waffle plot to look at the different types of regimes to which the Irish government gave aid over the decades

 dac %>% 
  mutate(decade = substr(year, 1, 3)) %>% 
  mutate(decade = paste0(decade, "0s")) %>% 
  group_by(decade) %>% 
  count(regime_name) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(fill = regime_name, values = n)) +
  geom_waffle(color = "white", size = 0.3, n_rows = 10, flip = TRUE) +
  facet_wrap(~decade, nrow = 1, strip.position = "bottom") + 
  bbplot::bbc_style()  +
  scale_fill_manual(values = pal_10) +
   scale_x_discrete(breaks = round(seq(0, 1, by = 0.2),3)) +
  labs(title = "Ireland's ODA foreign aid recipient regime types since 1945",
       subtitle = ("Source: OECD DAC"))  

Next, we will download dyadic foreign policy similarity measures from peacesciencer.

Peacesciencer package has tools and data sets for the study of quantitative peace science. 

Click here to read more about the peacesciencer package by Steven Miller

Building a dataset for political science analysis in R, PART 2

fp_similar_df <- peacesciencer::create_dyadyears() %>% 
  add_gwcode_to_cow() %>% 
  add_fpsim()	

I am only looking at dyadic foreign policy similarity with Ireland, so filter by Ireland’s Correlates of War code, 205.

Click here to find out all countries’ COW code

Correlates of War codes

fp_similar_df %<>% 
  filter(ccode1 == 205)

Data on alliance portfolios comes from the Correlates of War and is used to calculate similarity of foreign policy positions (see Altfeld & Mesquita, 1979).

The assumption is that similar alliance portfolios are the result of similar foreign policy positions.

With increasing in level of commitment, the strength of alliance commitments can be:

1. no commitment
2. entente
3. neutrality or nonaggression pact
4. defense pact

We will map out alliance similarity. This will use the measurement calculated with Cohen’s Kappa. Check out Hage’s (2011) article to read more about the different ways to measure alliance similarity.

Next we can look at UN similarity.

The UN voting variable calculates three values:

1 = Yes

2 = Abstain

3 = No

Based on these data, if two countries in a similar way on the same UN resolutions, this is a measure of the degree to which dyad members’ foreign policy positions are similar.

fp_similarity_df %>% 
  mutate(country = countrycode::countrycode(ccode2, "cown", "country.name")) %>% 
  select(country, ccode2, year,
         un_similar = kappavv) %>% 
  filter(year > 1989) %>% 
  filter(!is.na(country)) %>%
  mutate(iso2 = tolower(countrycode::countrycode(country, "country.name", "iso2c"))) %>% 
  group_by(country) %>% 
  mutate(avg_un = mean(un_similar, na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
  distinct(country, avg_un, iso2, .keep_all = FALSE) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  top_n(n = 10)  -> top_un_similar

And graph out the top ten

  top_un_similar %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = forcats::fct_reorder(country, avg_un), 
             y = avg_un)) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity",
           width = 0.7, 
           color = "#0a85e5", 
           fill = "#0a85e5") +
  ggflags::geom_flag(aes(x = country, y = 0, country = iso2), size = 15) +
  coord_flip() + bbplot::bbc_style()  +
  ggtitle("UN voting similarity with Ireland since 1990")

If we change the top_n() to negative, we can get the bottom 10

top_n(n = -10)

We can quickly scrape data about the EU countries with the rvest package

eu_members_html <- read_html("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union")
eu_members_tables <- eu_members_html %>% html_table(header = TRUE, fill = TRUE)

eu_member <- eu_members_tables[[6]]

eu_member %<>% 
  janitor::clean_names()

eu_member %>% distinct(state) %>%  pull(state) -> eu_state

Last we are going to look at globalization scores. The data comes from the the KOF Globalisation Index. This measures the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation. Globalisation in the economic, social and political fields has been on the rise since the 1970s, receiving a particular boost after the end of the Cold War.

Click here for data that you can download comes from the KOF website

kof %>%
  filter(country %in% eu_state) -> kof_eu

And compare Ireland to other EU countries on financial KOF index scores. We will put Ireland in green and the rest of the countries as grey to make it pop.

Ireland appears to follow the general EU trends and is not an outlier for financial globalisation scores.

kof_eu %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = year,  y = finance, groups = country)) + 
  geom_line(color = ifelse(kof_eu$country == "Ireland",     "#2a9d8f", "#8d99ae"),
  size = ifelse(kof_eu$country == "Ireland", 3, 2), 
  alpha = ifelse(kof_eu$country == "Ireland", 0.9, 0.3)) +
  bbplot::bbc_style() + 
  ggtitle("Financial Globalization in Ireland, 1970 to 2020", 
          subtitle = "Source: KOF")

References

Häge, F. M. (2011). Choice or circumstance? Adjusting measures of foreign policy similarity for chance agreement. Political Analysis, 19(3), 287-305.

Dreher, Axel (2006): Does Globalization Affect Growth? Evidence from a new Index of Globalizationcall_made, Applied Economics 38, 10: 1091-​1110.