Just an update on R coding

I'm teaching an introduction to political analysis course at UNLV this spring.  I have gone out on a limb and am teaching the students R instead of STATA or SPSS.  I am more familiar with STATA, but do my network analysis work in R.  I am trying to become more proficient.  I had a problem with a project I am working on - trying to count the number of rivalry ties that a state has in any given year. Normally I would do this in STATA, but I decided to give it a whirl in R.  After two hours and numerous "googlings" I have produced the code to give me the count for each year of my data.  The code looks like this:

for(i in 1816:2010){
  fp <- file.path("network", paste("net", i, ".txt", sep = ""))
  outcount <- file.path("count", paste("count", i, ".csv", sep=""))
 
  file <- read.table(fp)
  #sum row - this is the number of out ties by a state
  count.row <-rowSums(file, na.rm=FALSE, dims=1)
  count.col <- colSums(file, na.rm=FALSE, dims=1)
  comb.ties <- cbind(count.row, count.col)
  total.ties <- rowSums(comb.ties, na.rm=FALSE, dims=1)
  write.csv(total.ties, file= outcount, row.names = TRUE)  
}

Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

The data come from text files with a network matrix (sociomatrix) for the states involved in the international system.  I use these to examine network characteristics in other contexts.  Here, I have just used them as matrices and have used the summing features to get both the outgoing ties, states that identify others as rivals, and in ties, those that identify the state as rivals.  These are combined and summed for a total.  The total is then exported to a CSV file that can be used in other contexts.  It's blunt force, and perhaps inelegant, but it's mine!

A quick review of "The Beijing Consensus" and Central Asia

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to read the Beijing consensus to see what it said about the role of China in Central Asia.  The answer is that it depends.  There is very little in the book that talks about the region.  In fact there were only two or three mentions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at all - and these were really just in passing.

The more complicated answer is that the overall thesis of the book is about the ways that Beijing is circumventing the west's ideal of linking liberal economies with liberal polities.  The appeal of the China model is great for the autocratic rulers in the Central Asian states who face some similar issues as the Chinese. The primary motivator for these states is a need for stability.  This is shared by all the states in the region.  China and Russia are at the top of the list of states that have based their foreign policy on the stance that internal stability is the trump card.

For leaders around the world that look at the aftermath and continuing problems of the Arab Spring and the Euromaiden revolution brewing in Ukraine, the ideal of stability is attractive. The adherence of these states to the Westphalian ideal of sovereignty is a key to understanding Russian foreign policy and its positions in the UN.

This book is an important read for those that are interested in nuanced narratives of the way the world works.  It is important for reminding academics and policy wonks alike that there is a competing market in the world for ideas, and that there are powerful states that are backing a different set of ideas and ideals.