Politics Research Guide

Provides country profiles that cover key country facts, government and political history, current issues, political parties and organizations, legislatures and cabinets, and communications and media. Also profiles major international organizations. You can browse by regime type, party system, and electoral system, in addition to by country.

A year-by-year record of British and world events, published annually since 1758. Opens with the history of Britain, then a section on foreign history covering each country or region in turn. Following these are the chronicle of events, brief retrospectives on the year’s cultural and economic developments, a short selection of documents, and obituaries of eminent persons who died in the year.

Covers all the countries of the world with which the United States has relations. Each report contains info on bilateral relations with the U.S., travel, and business. There are also additional useful links, including a link to the CIA World Factbook entry for each country. These reports are updated periodically.

Links to official government sites, courtesy of Northwestern University.

A collaboration among more than 50 scholars worldwide and drawing on 3000 Country Experts, V-Dem provides multiple indices of democracy grouped according to 7 high-level Principles of Democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, majoritarian, consensual, deliberative, and egalitarian. Provides 5 high-level indices, 47 mid-level indices, and 450 individual indicators. Covers all countries (and some dependent territories) from 1900 to the present (91 countries back to 1789) and provides an estimate of measurement reliability for each rating. Data in multiple formats.

Well-known and highly respected Polity data series, originally designed by Ted Robert Gurr. Polity IV contains coded annual information on regime characteristics for all independent states (with greater than 500,000 total population) in the global state system and covers the years 1800+.

Freedom House's popular dataset, which ranks each country in the world annually on how free it is. Countries are ranked on a 1 to 7 scale (1 being most free) on 25 separate measures of political rights and civil liberties (including media freedom), and then given a designation as "free," "partly free," or "not free." Rankings in Excel, 1973+, with data on 7 subcategories from 2006+. See also their Freedom of the Press data 1979-2017.

Measures the quality of democracy based on a concept of democracy embracing liberal as well as participatory ideas. Covers 50+ countries, 1990-2017, utilizing nearly 100 indicators in nine areas: individual liberties, rule of law, public sphere, competition, mutual constraints, governmental capability, transparency, participation and representation. Data in csv and Excel.

Merges together 80+ of the most commonly used datasets in comparative and international political economy (including several listed on this page) into a uniform country-year format with consistent country codes. Variables cover democracy/regime type, parties and governments, development and economic indicators, and some social/cultural measures. Users can download as many or as few of the 885 variables from these datasets as needed. Data exports to .csv with Stata or R labels.

Simple dichotomous coding of democracy, where a democratic country is one that satisfies conditions for both contestation and participation. 1800-2010.

Classification of political regimes as democracy or 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. Data in Stata and Excel.

Geddes, Wright, and Frantz dataset focused on providing a detailed typology of autocratic regimes, their duration, and failure, 1946-2010. Also includes data coding democracies and non-autocracies for comparative research. Data in Stata, .txt, and Excel formats.

Identifies cases of potential democratic erosion based on data from the V-Dem project and then classifies events of democratic erosion and resistance to erosion. Erosion events are coded as either precursors (including threats to vertical and horizontal accountability, economic shocks, security events) or symptoms (including reductions in vertical and/or horizontal accountability or changes in societal norms). Data in Excel; covers 92 countries from 2000-2018; approx. 1800 events.

"This data collection consists of a compiled database that assesses 187 (20 historical and 167 contemporary) sovereign countries from 1800-2005." It compiles data from several sources, including Polity III, Polity IV, Freedom House, and World Development Indicators.

Covers 180 countries, 1975-2020. Codes 125 variables about executives, governments, and opposition parties such as:

• tenure and stability of the government
• fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature
• nationalist, rural, religious, and partisan economic orientation of executives and government/opposition parties
• date of election, vote share & seat share, electoral rules, checks and balances, and federalism

Covers 39 parliamentary democracies (mostly European), 1945-2008. Codes for duration of government, parties in government, seat share, reason for termination, number of ministers in cabinet, and ideological composition. Data in Excel.

Includes all autocratic ruling parties in the world from 1940–2015, covering 279 autocratic ruling party spells (with 262 unique parties). Codes for party origin, how it gained/lost power, time in power, regime type and following regime type, and post-transition fate among others. Data in Excel and Stata.

Cabinet-level data for 29 European democracies in post-WWII Europe. For each country, the archive contains data for all cabinets that have formed after the introduction of the current democratic regime of parliamentary democracy. Codes for cabinet formation and termination, ideological orientation and policy preferences, cabinet structure (seat shares, coalitions, bargaining power, etc.), institutional powers, and more. 1945-2010. Data in Excel and Stata.

Political and institutional variables for 36 OECD and EU countries, including government composition, elections, party systems, openness of the economy, labor and unions, social expenditures and policy. Data in Stata and Excel.

Seki-Williams extend the Woldendorp, Keman and Budge government composition data. Variables include government duration (with start and end dates), constitutional interelection period, type of government (majority, coalition, etc.), reason for government termination, party info and seat share, and ideological complexion of government and parliament. Also includes datasets on cabinet ministers and annual government partisanship. Covers about 50 countries, between 1945 and present. Data in Stata.

Fielded by the Quality of Government project, the survey measures the structure and behavior of public administration across 122 countries utilizing more than 1000 experts in multiple waves, 2008-present. Topics include meritocratic recruitment, internal promotion and career stability, salaries, impartiality, New Public Management (NPM) reforms, effectiveness/efficiency, corruption & embezzlement, transparency & control, women in the public sector, replacement of public sector employees, and bureaucratic representation. Data in multiple formats.

Survey of experts that estimates party positioning on European integration, ideology and policy issues for national parties in a variety of European countries. Waves in 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2019. Country and party coverage has increased over time to include all 277 parties in all 28 EU members plus Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey. Questions on parties' general position on European integration, various EU policies, economic & social left/right orientation, nationalism, immigration, redistribution, decentralization, environmental policy, and more. Trend file provides means of expert ratings for 1999-2019; datasets for individual waves are also available that include disaggregated expert ratings. Data in Stata or .csv.

Covering all EU and most OECD democracies (37 countries), provides information on:

• 1600 parties (party family, placement on various scales: left-right, state-market, liberty-authority, pro-anti EU)
• 950 elections, 8700 results (vote share, seats, and placement on left-right scale)
• 1500 cabinets involving 3700 parties (cabinet and opposition parties in parliament with their seat strength at each instance of government formation, includes cabinet start date, caretaker status, prime minister's party)
Data in .csv.

Codes for the policy preferences of over 1000 parties from 1945 until today in over 50 countries on five continents. It provides access to manifesto texts and content-analytical data and provides tools to explore and visualize the data and text corpus.

Comparative data on parliaments around the world, covering structure, membership (incl. some demographics), and rules of the institution. Data can be visualized or downloaded to .csv. Mostly data from the last decade, but some variables have deeper historical time series.

Archigos specifically identifies the effective leaders of each independent state; it codes when and how leaders came into power, their age, and their gender, as well as their personal fate one year after they lost office. Data is in Stata format accompanied by a PDF codebook with detailed case descriptions. (Alternate data link)

Building off the Archigos dataset, LEAD provides information about the personal lives and experiences of over 2,000 state leaders from 1875–2004. Provides details about military experiences, childhood, education, personal and family life, and occupational history before leaders assumed power. The data are available in leader-year, tab-delimited format.

Project to collect biographical information on leaders throughout the world—including members of the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, and other elites whose power is of an informal nature. Covers nearly 40,000 leaders from 145 countries and codes for 50 variables, including office type, gender, age, education level and location, marital status, occupation, language, and more. Data collected 2010-2013; updates planned going forward.

Comparative historical data on foreign ministers’ background and reasons for leaving office in the world’s 13 former and current great powers from 1789 to the present. The data covers 1155 regular (non-acting) foreign ministers, as well as partial information on 173 acting foreign ministers, for the following 13 great powers: Austria (the Habsburg Empire/Austria-Hungary), Britain, China (Qing Empire/Republic/People’s Republic of China), France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Prussia/Germany, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Data in .csv and Stata.

"The goal of the CHISOLS data is to differentiate 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." In .csv and Stata formats.

Codes information, such as gender, party, portfolio, and role, on cabinet members in July every year in the period 1966-2016 in all countries with a population of more than 400,000 citizens (177 countries). Includes country and leader codes to aid in merging with other datasets. Data in R or .csv format.

Monthly register published by the CIA listing the names and portfolios of government executives and ministers throughout the world, 2001-present. Older editions are available via HathiTrust with some coverage from most years 1967-2002. Print editions for many years from the same period are also available.

"A collection of biographical and professional information on the individuals who constitute the top elite of authoritarian regimes, generally referred to as the ruling or winning coalition." Covers 18 regimes, generally 1950-2018, though some earlier regimes are included. Variables include gender, occupation, dates of birth and death, tenure among the elite, and more. Data in tab delimited format.

Provides a wide range of biographical information on all top rebel, insurgent, and terrorist leaders who were active in civil wars between 1980 and 2011. Data in .csv and Stata.

Data on all MEPs from 1979 (EP1) to 2024 (EP9). Variables include name, gender, country, EP party group, national party, length of service, prior political experience, and committee membership (only EP9). Data in Excel.

Compiles a wide range of freely available data on the causes, consequences, and nature of good governance and Quality of Government (QoG) - that is, trustworthy, reliable, impartial, uncorrupt, and competent government institutions. Click on "Data downloads" on the left. Because it includes so many different variables, you can download different "flavors" of the dataset, including a simplified "basic" dataset as well as social policy and expert survey datasets.

Aggregate and individual governance indicators for 215 economies over the period 1996-2019, for six dimensions of governance: Voice and Accountability; Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism; Government Effectiveness; Regulatory Quality; Rule of Law; Control of Corruption. Compiled by researchers at the World Bank. Also available through the WB Databank.

Index measuring transparency as the disclosure of policy-relevant information by the government to the public, specifically the availability of credible aggregate economic data. Provides observations for 125 countries from 1980-2010. Data in Stata and R.

Data measuring "legibility"--or "the breadth and depth of the state’s information about its citizens and their activities"--which is used as a proxy for state capacity. Measured using Myers scores, which gauge the accuracy of age data reported in national population censuses. Covers 131 countries, generally 1960-2015. Also includes subnational scores for most countries. Data in Stata.

Offers numerical data on five institutions and policies that modern states use to collect information about their populations and territories: (1) the regular implementation of a reliable census, (2) the regular release of statistical yearbooks, the operation of (3) civil and (4) population registers, and (5) the establishment of a government agency tasked with processing statistical information. The dataset also includes an overall index of “information capacity” for 85 polities from 1750 to 2015. Data in Stata.

The index measures the degree of economic freedom present in five major areas: [1] Size of Government; [2] Legal System and Security of Property Rights; [3] Sound Money; [4] Freedom to Trade Internationally; [5] Regulation. In total, the index comprises 42 distinct variables. All variables come from third party sources, such as the International Country Risk Guide, the Global Competitiveness Report, and the World Bank’s Doing Business project. Data can be downloaded to Excel.

"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." Covers 2006-present.

Aims to build a new generation of governance indicators that take seriously the multi-level and multi-actor nature of governance in a globalized world, that are grounded in conceptual models, and that stay close to the governance problems of our times. Indicators vary to match the theme of each annual Governance Report. Data available in csv, Stata, R, and Excel; 2013-present.

Provides annual state fragility, effectiveness, and legitimacy indices (with eight component indicators) for 167 countries (SPSS and Excel data files). 1995–present.

Additional sources for measuring political and economic risk at the country level (from our International Macroeconomics guide).

Captures the prevalence of different types of bribery in 139 countries based on surveys of more than 135,000 firms. Data can be explored in conjunction with other topics in the surveys. Generally covers 1-2 waves, 2007-present. Data in Excel.

Annual index assessing governance in all 54 African countries. Pulls in data on 100 indicators from 36 sources and standardizes into a single comparative index. Four overarching categories are safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity, and human development. Covers 2000-present. Data can be downloaded in Excel.

Data for the Regional Authority Index (RAI) are in two datasets (region is defined as a jurisdiction between national government and local government):

• one with annual scores for 231 regional governments/tiers in 65 countries for the period 1950-2010
• one aggregating these scores to the country level
• measured on ten dimensions: institutional depth, policy scope, fiscal autonomy, borrowing autonomy, representation, law making, executive control, fiscal control, borrowing control, and constitutional reform
• Data in Excel (at bottom of the page).

Measures underlying political power-sharing and federalism structures and their ability to support credible policy commitments. Covers 180 countries, 1975-2010. Data in multiple formats.

Provides indicators of party strength for 227 regionalist parties competing in regional and national elections in 329 regions of 18 countries, 1944-2010. Data in Excel.

Consists of approximately 450 governance indicators 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). 1990-2015, data in multiple formats.

Utilizes a new typology of territorial self-governance that identifies eight specific types of territorial self-governance on the basis of three criteria: constitutional protection, territorial quality,and strength of self-rule. Covers more than 2,200 second-level regions in 96 Western and non-Western democracies, semi-democracies, and a selection of autocratic regimes between 2000 and 2018. Data in .csv as well as GIS shapefiles.

CShapes maps the borders and capitals of independent states and dependent territories from 1886 to 2019. The dataset can be downloaded in various formats and is also accessible through the CShapes R package. Allows user to compute distances between territories or produce maps at different points in time.

An online, open license resource of boundaries to the second subnational administrative level (ADM0 > ADM1 > ADM2, e.g., national > state/province > county/department). Currently tracks approximately 1 million boundaries within over 200 entities, including all 195 UN member states. All boundaries are available to view or download in common file formats, including shapefiles; the only requirement for use is acknowledgement. Can be downloaded by country or region or via API. Annual versions (back to 2017) available via their archived releases.