Political Science

Participating countries and provinces include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district and macro/electoral system variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis.

Open source dataset classifies covers 202 countries, from 1946 or year of independence to 2008. It classifies political regimes as democracy and dictatorship; democracies as parliamentary, semi-presidential (mixed) and presidential; and dictatorships as military, civilian and royal.

This project studies leadership accountability in polities with multi-party elections around the world. The first wave of 2008-2009 expert surveys (DALP I) involved data collection in more than 80 countries. You can download the previous survey from this web page and access the codebook for DALP I. They are currently collecting data for a second wave (DALP II) with data from more than 95 countries.

The Electoral Integrity Project produces policy-relevant research comparing elections worldwide. The project addresses three questions: When do elections meet international standards of electoral integrity? What happens when elections fail to do so? And what can be done to mitigate these problems?

The Executive Approval Project (EAP) is a cross-national effort to measure and analyze public support for political executives. It is coordinated by an EAP Team and supported by Country Teams and numerous contributors around the globe. The EAP has produced multiple publications and is central to many ongoing projects.

The Global Party Survey is an international survey that draws on 1,861 party and election experts, key ideological values, issue positions, and populist rhetoric for 1,043 parties in 163 countries. The research project is designed to replicate the tried and tested methods of expert surveys, while simultaneously innovating and broadening the research agenda in several important ways.

The Manifesto Project provides the scientific community with parties’ policy positions derived from a content analysis of parties’ electoral manifestos. It covers over 1000 parties from 1945 until today in over 50 countries on five continents.

The Minorities at Risk (MAR) Project is a university-based research project that monitors and analyzes the status and conflicts of politically-active communal groups in all countries with a current population of at least 500,000. The project is designed to provide information in a standardized format that aids comparative research and contributes to the understanding of conflicts involving relevant groups. Selected project materials on more than 284 groups (the MAR database and codebook as well as detailed historical chronologies) are available through this site for researchers, public officials, journalists, students, activists, and others interested in the topic.

The Polity Project codes authority characteristics of states in the world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis. The dataset covers all major, independent states in the global system over the period 1800-2018 (i.e., states with a total population of 500,000 or more in the most recent year; currently 167 countries with Polity refinements completed for about half those countries).

The Team Populism dataset measures the populist discourse of presidents and prime ministers from 40 countries around the globe between 2000 and 2018. Data points consists of a single, average score for each term of executive. Data were produced through holistic grading of political speeches. Compiled from previous datasets and from a new round of coding in fall 2018.

Varieties of Democracy provides 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. It includes five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collects data to measure these principles.

The survey, which started in 1981, seeks to use the most rigorous, high-quality research designs in each country. The WVS consists of nationally representative surveys conducted in almost 100 countries which contain almost 90 percent of the world’s population, using a common questionnaire. The WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed, currently including interviews with almost 400,000 respondents. Moreover the WVS is the only academic study covering the full range of global variations, from very poor to very rich countries, in all of the world’s major cultural zones.

Arab Barometer is a nonpartisan research network that provides insight into the social, political, and economic attitudes and values of ordinary citizens across the Arab world.

Afrobarometer is non-partisan, pan-African research institution conducting public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, the economy and society in 30+ countries repeated on a regular cycle.

Eurobarometer is the polling instrument used by the European Commission, the European Parliament and other EU institutions and agencies to monitor regularly the state of public opinion in Europe on issues related to the European Union as well as attitudes on subjects of political or social nature. The aim of the Eurobarometer is also to provide quality and relevant data for experts in public opinion and the general public alike.

Latinobarómetro is an annual public opinion survey that involves some 20,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countries, representing more than 600 million inhabitants.

Correlates of War seeks to facilitate the collection, dissemination, and use of accurate and reliable quantitative data in international relations.

Freedom House produces research and reports on a number of core thematic issues related to democracy, political rights and civil liberties. Our research and analysis frame the policy debate in the United States and abroad on the progress and decline of freedom.

The Minorities at Risk (MAR) Project is a university-based research project that monitors and analyzes the status and conflicts of politically-active communal groups in all countries with a current population of at least 500,000. The project is designed to provide information in a standardized format that aids comparative research and contributes to the understanding of conflicts involving relevant groups. Selected project materials on more than 284 groups (the MAR database and codebook as well as detailed historical chronologies) are available through this site for researchers, public officials, journalists, students, activists, and others interested in the topic.

The main purpose of the Transitional Justice Research Collaborative has been to produce data and use the data to understand the impact of justice mechanisms on human rights and democracy around the world. The project collects and analyzes detailed data about three main transitional justice mechanisms: human rights prosecutions, truth commissions, and amnesty laws.