Some Things To Do With WikiLeaks Data

This lovely graph, created by Erik Voeten and published over at The Monkey Cage,

depicts the daily number of cables sent about the UN Security Council in the post-2006 period (for which the daily number of cables in the data is relatively constant). My first hunch was that elections for non-permanent membership would generate unusual amounts of lobbying. At first glance, this seems to only modestly increase traffic, aside from the unusual 2006 election in which Venezuela was defeated after 47 rounds of voting. Most of the spikes in communications occur around the substantive resolutions, such as the May 2008 compromise on Lebanon.

As Voeten points out — along with my friend Miguel Centellas — you too can download and play with the WikiLeaks data, for your own pleasure or love of political science.

Of course, Voeten also points to the reservations about playing around with the WikiLeaks data, and about the (morally troubling) personality behind WikiLeaks, thoughtfully put forward by Drew Conway. (And Centellas made a similar point to me via Twitter.)