The objective of this paper is to analyze two research tools applied in the social sciences for quantitative and qualitative studies respectively, namely codebook, or coding scheme, and individual in-depth interview – in terms of their applicability for studies of populist political communication. To this end, three codebooks serving as the tools of media content analysis in the above-mentioned international studies conducted in Europe in 2012 – 2017 are critically reviewed, and the structure of a questionnaire for in-depth interviews planned within the COST Action IS1308 Populist Political Communication in Europe: Comprehending the Challenge of Mediated Political Populism for Democratic Politics is analyzed.

In international relations theory alliances are often regarded as factors influencing the incidence of interstate war. This study statistically examines this claim on a population of cases taken from the Correlates of War project data sets, consisting of 3216 instances of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) that occurred in the period 1816 – 2000, 307 of which were wars. In the test, this initial data set has been divided into three sub-sets comprising: (1) originator dyads, (2) originators-as-initiators-and-joiners-astargets dyads, and (3) joiners-as-initiators-andoriginators- as-targets dyads; and ten variables were used to determine the impact of alliances on whether MIDs will become wars. These variables included unit-, dyad-, and system-level indicators of the presence of alliances, their capabilities and tightness. Combined, this enabled the analysis to test hypotheses related to the capability-aggregation and war-diffusion functions of alliances as well as arguments on the relationship between polarity and war.