Data for Comparative Political Science
Jack Vowles
University of Exeter
This page provides links to a series of datasets of interest to researchers in comparative politics and comparative political economy that can be downloaded freely. Some are well-known, others slightly more obscure.
This page was last updated January 17 2009.
All datasets are directly downloadable, and thanks are due to the people and organisations who put their data up for others to freely access. Other links are to the web pages of researchers who, from time to time, will either mount data for download or who will provide it on request. Obviously, that's up to them.
This page has been mainly set up for my students in comparative politics, but if others come across it, that's great. If you know of other downloadable datasets that are useful and haven't been linked here, please let me know at j.vowles@exeter.ac.uk
The web pages of these organisations are frequently revamped so if any of these links don't work any more, please let me know. Suggestions for other links to add will also be welcome.
Users of this data are advised to download the accompanying documentation and study carefully the definitions of all these variables. Some useful data may be found at a similar and far more comprehensive site than this one, for international relations, created and maintained by Paul Hensel at the University of North Texas. Also see Poly-Cy, Internet Resources for Political Science, maintained by Bob Duval, Department of Political Science, West Virginia University.
Note that there are many other useful sources of data for which subscriptions are necessary, but can usually be accessed through a good university library. The World Bank's World Development Indicators particularly stand out.
Freedom
House: Political and Social Rights
Scores estimated for political and social rights for all countries and territories around the world since 1973.
Freedom House: Freedom
of the Press
Freedom House also has data
estimating Freedom of the Press since 1980.
Database of Political Institutions.
The work of Thorsten Beck, George Clarke,
Alberto Groff, Philip Keefer, and Patrick Walsh at the World Bank.
This contains data on electoral
systems, federalism, fractionalisation of legislatures and party systems, and
veto players.
Coded annual information on regime and authority characteristics for all independent states (with greater than 500,000 total population) in the global state system and covers the years 1800-2003. Integrated Network for Societal Conflict Research, University of Maryland.
Measures the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation for countries on an annual basis over the period 1982 to 2004, and combines these into an overall globalisation index, or score. Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick.
Index of
Economic Freedom (Heritage Foundation)
Data from 1995 onwards across a
range of variables estimating government intervention in the economy. Designed
to establish 'the link between economic freedom and prosperity'.
Economic Freedom Index
(Fraser Institute).
An alternative index with a
similar objective.
These two indices are discussed at
length on a page
at wikipedia.com.
Center for International
Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices (CIC), University of Pennsylvania.
The Penn World Table provides purchasing power parity and national income
accounts converted to international prices for 188 countries for some or all of
the years 1950-2004.
Various datasets on comparative political economy used in various publications, including Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions, Cambridge, MIT, 2003. Professor Torsten Persson is Director of the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University.
Access to the External Wealth of Nations Mark II dataset on gross foreign asset and liability positions over 1970-2004 for 145 industrial and developing countries. Professor Philip R. Lane is Director of the Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College, University of Dublin.
Datasets from Paul Pennings, Hans Keman, Jan Kleinnijenhuis, Doing Research in Political Science: An Introduction to Comparative Methods and Statistics, Sage 2006. These pages contain a number of other links, but many are out of date. Paul Pennings is Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam.
A site with geo-political data maintained privately by John van der Heyden. Contains population and some economic statistics.
Association
of Religion Data Archives
Data from multiple sources, but
many of the measures are from the ARDA's coding of the 2003 US State Department's
International Religious Freedom Reports. This coding produced data on 195
different countries and territories but excluded the United States. The ARDA is
currently housed in the Social Science Research Institute at the Pennsylvania
State University.
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES).
Macro and also micro-level data from surveys across a variety of countries since 1996. Currently two modules are available. Module 2 is not quite complete and closes at the end of 2006. Module 3 is in the field. The CSES is currently based at the University of Michigan.