Parliaments and governments database

Project description

ParlGov is a data infrastructure for political science. It contains information for all EU and most OECD democracies (37 countries) from 1945 until today. The database combines approximately 1400 parties, 760 elections (7200 results), and 1100 cabinets (2700 parties).

Project leaders

Reference

• ParlGov database (Döring and Manow 2015)
• Döring, Holger and Philip Manow. 2015. Parliaments and governments database (ParlGov): Information on parties, elections and cabinets in modern democracies. Development version.

Dataset

Applications

• Country-Year format ·

• Party composition of EU institutions · · (2.7mb)
  • Döring, Holger. 2013. ‘The Collective Action of Data Collection: A Data Infrastructure on Parties, Elections and Cabinets’. European Union Politics 14(1):161–78.
• College of Commissioners ·
  • Döring, Holger. 2007. ‘The Composition of the College of Commissioners’. European Union Politics 8(2):207–228.

FAQ

• Q · People behind ParlGov?

• We keep information about all contributors to the ParlGov project in a credits file.

• Q · Plans for the future?

• Establish ParlGov as a platform for collaborative data collection in political science

  Extend types of data covered -- funding and cooperation partners needed

• Q · Sources of party positions?

• Party positions are based on various party expert surveys and sources vary for the dimensions we include. We have a page with more detailed information.

• Q · Versions · stable, devel., exper.?

• A development version reflects the current working environment. All recent updates and corrections are already included into it.

  A stable versions is archived once a year and we document changes between stable versions.

  An experimental version can be accessed after signing in and it includes data (tables and variables) that are not included in the next stable version. It is a superset of the development version.

• Q · Data types · primary, ext., view, calc.?

• Primary data?: Information we collect and save in the ParlGov database. To be more specific, these are those database table that we actively maintain and that are based on various data sources.

  External data?: Datasets that have been collected by other researchers and are linked to ParlGov data. You can combine this data with ParlGov observations through id variables or/and scripts. You have to cite the usage of these data separately.

  Views?: Some observations can be calculated from primary data. This information is stored in seperate tables (views) and is generated automatically by the database. Relying on views avoids data redundancy, so that we have to update every observation only once.

  Calculated parameters?: Some parameters can not be constructed through views and have to be calculated. Currently, we determine these values with various R scripts. As a consequence, these observation contain a variable that gives information about the date of calculation. We may update these scripts in the future and turn it into dynamic calculations.

• Q · Release cycle of stable version?

• We provide one stable version every year.

• Q · Static copy of the webpage?

• Stable releases up to ParlGov 12/10 included a static copy of the webpage and all tables from the database. Creating this copy was a mundane, time cosuming and unreliable endevor. Hence, we have abondonded dumping the entire page and all tables for a stable version.

• Q · How can I contribute?

• Please get in touch if you would like to provide data, scripts, feedback.