PSCI 361 - Political Research

The Dataverse provides researchers the ability to download custom datasets with information about the political and economic characteristics of countries. The country-year version of the Dataverse includes over 1000 variables, covering more than 180 countries from 1816-2018. Also includes a dyad-year version of the resource which provides information about the relationship between countries – e.g., geographic distance, trade flows, treaties, and wars.

A multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. Distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collects data to measure these principles.

Codes authority characteristics of states in the world system. Covers all major, independent states in the global system over the period 1800-2017 (i.e., states with a total population of 500,000 or more in the most recent year; currently 167 countries)

Assesses the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world. Includes historical data from 1972 forward.

An index of democracy. Based on a middle range concept of democracy, embracing liberal as well as participatory ideas of democracy.

Classification of political regimes as democracy and dictatorship. Classification of democracies as parliamentary, semi-presidential (mixed) and presidential. Classification of dictatorships as military, civilian and royal. Coverage: 202 countries, from 1946 or year of independence to 2008.

Captures the precursors and symptoms of democratic erosion across countries and over time. Also records acts of resistance to democratic erosion from within the media, bureaucracy and civil society.

Presents institutional and electoral results data such as measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature, among others. Covers about 180 countries from 1975-2017.

Covers 39 parliamentary democracies from 1945, or the year these countries became a parliamentary democracy (again)., through 2008. Mostly covers European countries. For an extension through 2014, see the Seki-Williams data also included in this guide.

Extends the Party Government Data Set (also included in this guide) through 2014.

Consists of cabinet-level data for 29 European democracies in post-WWII Europe. For each country it includes data for the cabinets that have formed after the introduction of the current democratic regime of parliamentary democracy (for Cyprus representative democracy). Included are cabinets that have formed before or on December 31 2010.Coverage is through December 2013.

A collection of political and institutional country-level data consisting of annual data for 36 democratic countries for the period of 1960 to 2017 or since their transition to democracy.

Contains information for all EU and most OECD democracies (37 countries). Combines approximately 1700 parties, 990 elections (9200 results), and 1500 cabinets (3800 parties).

Includes data from several countries on structure of parliament, current number of members, percentage of women, election results, and more.

Includes a range of variables for all autocratic ruling parties in the world from 1940-2015.

Includes data with information on leaders in 188 countries from 1875-2004. Identifies the effective leaders of each independent state, coding when and how leaders came into power, their age, and their gender, as well as their personal fate one year after they left office.

Differentiates "leader transitions in which a new leader comes to office who depends on different societal groups for support than her predecessor from leader transitions where both the current leader and her predecessor rely on essentially the same groups for support. The data cover all countries with a population of more than 500,000 between 1919-2008. CHISOLS is available in two formats, one with the state-year as unit of analysis, and one with the leader as unit of analysis."

Includes downloads of raw data, a variable search tool, and visualization tools.

Reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories over the period 1996–2018, for six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption.

"Examines the causes and consequences of government transparency both through theoretical and empirical approaches...[It] focuses on the availability of credible aggregate economic data. It does so by examining patterns of missing data and treating transparency as the latent term which best reflects the tendency to disclose." Available in Stata and R format.

"A tool that measures and monitors governance performance in African countries." Includes four categories: Safety & Rule of Law, Participation & Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity, and Human Development.

"The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) analyzes and evaluates the quality of democracy, a market economy and political management in 129 developing and transition countries. It measures successes and setbacks on the path toward a democracy based on the rule of law and a socially responsible market economy...The Status Index ranks the countries according to their quality of democracy and market economy as of January 31, 2015...The Management Index ranks the countries according to their leadership’s political management performance between February 2013 and January 2015. "

The indicators vary by year and include topics such as infrastructure, global crisis, and health governance. They "are made available online to the public in the form of interactive tools as well as downloadable data sets and supplementary materials."

"Provides annual state fragility, effectiveness, and legitimacy indices and the eight component indicators for the world's 167 countries with populations greater than 500,000 in 2018." From 1995 forward. Available in SPSS and Excel.

"Tracks regional authority on an annual basis from 1950 to 2010 in 81 countries. The sample consists of all EU member states, all OECD member states, all Latin American countries, ten countries in Europe beyond the EU and eleven in the Pacific and South-East Asia."

"Covers 180 countries from 1975-2010."

"Provides total regionalist party strength for 227 regionalist parties competing regional and national elections in 329 regions in 18 countries between 1944 and 2010."

Consists "of approximately 450 variables covering three levels of European regions - Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS): NUTS0 (country), NUTS1(major socio-economic regions) and NUTS2(basic regions for the application of regional policies). The data is presented in time-series version (from 1990 to 2015), the unit of analysis is region-year (e.g. Stockholm-2013, Bremen-2005 and so on)."