Politics: Data and Statistics: Cross-National Comparative Studies

Cross-National Comparative Data

• Comparative Constitutions Project
  The goal of the Comparative Constitutions Project is to collect data on the formal characteristics of written constitutions, both current and historical, for most independent states since 1789. Characteristics include aspects of both form and content of these documents.To achieve this goal, we have divided the research into three concurrent phases: (1) construct constitutional chronologies for all independent states in our sample; (2) acquiring English texts for every constitutional event; and (3) code each constitutional event.

• Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Participating countries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district and macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis. Alternative access: ICPSR.

• Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive
  The Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive (CNTS) is a longitudinal set of 194 variables with data for over 200 county units for the period 1815-2008 (excluding the two modern wartime periods, 1914-1918 and 1940-1945). The CNTS data was originally published by Arthur S. Banks at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1968 and was based on data from the Statesman's Yearbook. Variables cover economic, political, population and demographic variables. Emphasis is on political regime and systems data.

• Database of Political Institutions (DPI) is a project of the World Bank. The DPI contains 108 variables for 177 countries over the years 1975-2006. The variables provide details about elections, electoral rules, type of political system, party composition of the opposition and government coalitions, and the extent of military influence on government.

• Freedom House publishes comparative surveys and special reports focused on the state of democracy and human rights around the world.  Some reports are available online.  The annual publication Freedom in the World is available in print.

• Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2007 continues the Polity research tradition of coding the authority characteristics of states in the world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis.

• Transparency International measures corruption worldwide using tools such as the Corruption Perception Index, the Bribe Payers Index, and the Global Corruption Barometer.

• Quality of Government Data Institute
  Under Downloads you will find five datasets, three of which are available in both Time Series and Cross Section. The flagship is our award winning QoG Standard Dataset. To make it easier to navigate we also offer the QoG Basic Dataset which contains the most qualitative variables from the Standard Dataset.

  The QoG Expert Survey is a dataset based on our survey of experts on public administration around the world, available in an individual dataset and an aggregated dataset covering 107 countries.

  The QoG OECD is a newly available dataset published by the QoG Institute. It covers countries who are members of the OECD. The dataset is further distinguished due to its high data coverage in terms geography and time.

  In addition to these datasets we offer the QoG EU Regional Dataset. The dataset concerns corruption on regional level within the EU and the data is based on a survey of 34,000 respondents.

  The Data Visualization Tool is an addition to the QoG data pages. It is a tool that allows you to display the data from the QoG Basic Dataset on a world map and in scatterplots.

  The Extras section includes reading recommendations and has a special section for Stata users, which among other things contains details on the QoG-Stata commands.

  In the section Articles using QoG data, we have gathered academic articles that use QoG data.

• World Development Report from the World Bank. Contains statistical data for over 600 development indicators and time series data from 1960-present for over 200 countries and 18 country groups. Data includes social, economic, financial, natural resources, and environmental indicators.

These sites also list and provide links to data sets of interest to the internationally focused scholar.