Party Government in Europe Database
In several areas, particularly regarding citizens opinions, electoral studies and the quality of governance, there is continuous building of databases enabling comparative studies. These projects are nonetheless of limited value when it comes to key issues of today s representative democracy namely delegation, accountability, the struggle for government and ministerial positions (government formation) and government dissolution (including the calling of early elections). This proposed infrastructure project builds on three major international and comparative projects on European parliamentary democracy, in which RJ been the main sponsor for two of these projects. This project does not represent a simple update, but means that important elements of representative democracy for the first time can be identified in a systematic and comparative European study.
Existing databases include information about parties, governments, party systems and political institutions of 29 European countries for the period 1945-2010. The data that these projects collected should be updated, partially redone (for example, in able to satisfactory be able to study government dissolutions and early elections), and expanded. This will enable new comparative studies of representative democracy, its challenges and possible room for reforms. The update and expansion of these datasets will be made by the project participants, as well as using "country experts", i.e. colleagues around Europe.
Existing databases include information about parties, governments, party systems and political institutions of 29 European countries for the period 1945-2010. The data that these projects collected should be updated, partially redone (for example, in able to satisfactory be able to study government dissolutions and early elections), and expanded. This will enable new comparative studies of representative democracy, its challenges and possible room for reforms. The update and expansion of these datasets will be made by the project participants, as well as using "country experts", i.e. colleagues around Europe.
Final report
• Purpose of the project and how it has developed during the project period
The infrastructure project Party Government in Europe Database (PAGED) builts on three major international and comparative projects on European parliamentary democracy, of which Riksbankens Jubileumsfond was the main sponsor of two of these projects. The main goal of this project was to update and further develop the research infrastructure to enable studies of government formation, governance, government termination, and early elections.
The project had three main goals. Previous databases included information for 17 Western European countries from 1945 until 1999 and for 10 Central and Eastern European countries until 2014. The first goal was to update these data up to 2019, and to include a new country – Croatia. The updating and expansion of this data has been done partly “in-house”, but to a large extent with the help of "country experts". That is, colleagues around Europe who are experts on political parties and coalition research. These have, with the help of standardized coding instructions, collected information from official documents (from government offices and parliaments), party documents (election manifestos and coalition agreements), through media analyzes and through semi-structured interviews with (former) junior ministers, ministers, and political party leaders.
The second goal was to improve the classification of a number of variables related to - government terminations; political institutions and decision-making rules (not least regarding semi-presidentialism and rules for investiture votes); and to create a number of new variables. These new variables were in order - the existence of so-called pre-election coalitions and its constituent parties, support parties for minority governments, and the variations of different types of care-taker governments (classified according to their decision-making power).
A third and final goal was to provide researchers and students with different types of data suitable for specific studies or specific statistical methods. This included a party dataset, were political parties (rather than governments) is the unit of analysis. A dataset with so called “potential governments” or "proto-coalitions" to be able to use discrete choice modelling. And finally, data structured on quarterly, monthly, and annual basis to be able to use time-varying survival models, and also combine the dataset with economic indicators or polling data.
• The project results and a discussion about them
Following the latest updates, the PAGED database will contain information on parties and governments, party systems and political institutions in all European Parliamentary democracies for the period 1945–2019. For the first time, data for Croatia are now also available. The project's first main objective is unfortunately not fully met at the time of writing as the data collection for Central and Eastern Europe (except Croatia) is somewhat delayed (see below for more details).
The project's third main goal has been fully met and on the basis of the data we have published so far, additional variables has been added and the different, alternative datasets mentioned above, are available for download.
In addition to this, we have developed and added a variety of visualization tools that are available at: https://erdda.org/data-visualisation/
• Briefly about how the infrastructure has been used and what research has been initiated with the help of the infrastructure
The infrastructure has been used by researchers, students, and journalists around Europe. In Sweden, a number of political events in recent years have made this information in demand - the threat of extra elections (early elections) after the 2014 parliamentary election, the protracted government formation after the 2018 parliamentary election, and the vote of no confidence that ended the incumbent government in the summer of 2021.
Apart from the media, information from the infrastructure has been presented at the Swedish Parliament and Statistics Sweden in connection with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Swedish parliamentary democracy, but also as in presentations aimed to a wider public (eg at seminars arranged by RJ, SNS and VR ) and on the research blog About power and politics (https://maktochpolitik.wordpress.com/).
• Unforeseen technical and methodological problems, and deviations from the original plan
There have been no unforeseen technical problems during the project. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter part of the data collection for governments in Central and Eastern Europe was unfortunately delayed. This data collection will be completed in the following year. Unfortunately, interview data will be completely or partially missing for some governments because some government representatives (often from right-wing populist parties) refuse to be interviewed by academics. As far as possible, we have instead relied on media reporting.
• The integration of work in the authority / organization, and how the infrastructure is to be maintained in the long term
Umeå University and the Department of Political Science have been helpful in supporting the infrastructure both financially and organizationally. The infrastructure is also an integral part of the department's research and teaching. We have secured funding for the infrastructure between 2022–2024 via the consortium Demscore (see demscore.se), which is partly financed by the Swedish Research Council's national research infrastructure grant and partly by Umeå University. We will actively work to obtain more long-term financing after 2024.
• Infrastructure accessibility and relation to requirements for open accessibility and Open Science
All data is available open-access, free of charge, via the infrastructure's website, as well as via open data repositories. During the project, the infrastructure's datasets has been downloaded approximately 1,000 times per year and the website has had approximately 1,500–3,000 unique visitors per year.
• International collaborations
The main international collaborations take place with the more than 50 colleagues around Europe, Canada and the USA who have helped to collect data for this and previous projects. In addition, the infrastructure has been cooperating with the Parliament and Government's database (https://parlgov.org/) for many years.
• Publications
To encourage participation and quality review of data, we invited the international "country experts" to participate in book projects and a Special issue. An edited book on Western Europe and Croatia was published by Oxford University Press in 2021 (Bergman et al., 2021) and a second edited book on governments and governance in Central and Eastern Europe is planned for publication in 2023. In addition, a Special issue in Western European Politics is under production.
The Swedish team has also been involved in various book projects that have used the data infrastructure, including a book on the protracted government formation after the Swedish parliamentary elections 2018 (Teorell et al., 2020), and a book on political polarization in Sweden (Oskarsson et al., 2021).
• Links to own website
Data and publications can be accessed via https://erdda.org/
The infrastructure project Party Government in Europe Database (PAGED) builts on three major international and comparative projects on European parliamentary democracy, of which Riksbankens Jubileumsfond was the main sponsor of two of these projects. The main goal of this project was to update and further develop the research infrastructure to enable studies of government formation, governance, government termination, and early elections.
The project had three main goals. Previous databases included information for 17 Western European countries from 1945 until 1999 and for 10 Central and Eastern European countries until 2014. The first goal was to update these data up to 2019, and to include a new country – Croatia. The updating and expansion of this data has been done partly “in-house”, but to a large extent with the help of "country experts". That is, colleagues around Europe who are experts on political parties and coalition research. These have, with the help of standardized coding instructions, collected information from official documents (from government offices and parliaments), party documents (election manifestos and coalition agreements), through media analyzes and through semi-structured interviews with (former) junior ministers, ministers, and political party leaders.
The second goal was to improve the classification of a number of variables related to - government terminations; political institutions and decision-making rules (not least regarding semi-presidentialism and rules for investiture votes); and to create a number of new variables. These new variables were in order - the existence of so-called pre-election coalitions and its constituent parties, support parties for minority governments, and the variations of different types of care-taker governments (classified according to their decision-making power).
A third and final goal was to provide researchers and students with different types of data suitable for specific studies or specific statistical methods. This included a party dataset, were political parties (rather than governments) is the unit of analysis. A dataset with so called “potential governments” or "proto-coalitions" to be able to use discrete choice modelling. And finally, data structured on quarterly, monthly, and annual basis to be able to use time-varying survival models, and also combine the dataset with economic indicators or polling data.
• The project results and a discussion about them
Following the latest updates, the PAGED database will contain information on parties and governments, party systems and political institutions in all European Parliamentary democracies for the period 1945–2019. For the first time, data for Croatia are now also available. The project's first main objective is unfortunately not fully met at the time of writing as the data collection for Central and Eastern Europe (except Croatia) is somewhat delayed (see below for more details).
The project's third main goal has been fully met and on the basis of the data we have published so far, additional variables has been added and the different, alternative datasets mentioned above, are available for download.
In addition to this, we have developed and added a variety of visualization tools that are available at: https://erdda.org/data-visualisation/
• Briefly about how the infrastructure has been used and what research has been initiated with the help of the infrastructure
The infrastructure has been used by researchers, students, and journalists around Europe. In Sweden, a number of political events in recent years have made this information in demand - the threat of extra elections (early elections) after the 2014 parliamentary election, the protracted government formation after the 2018 parliamentary election, and the vote of no confidence that ended the incumbent government in the summer of 2021.
Apart from the media, information from the infrastructure has been presented at the Swedish Parliament and Statistics Sweden in connection with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Swedish parliamentary democracy, but also as in presentations aimed to a wider public (eg at seminars arranged by RJ, SNS and VR ) and on the research blog About power and politics (https://maktochpolitik.wordpress.com/).
• Unforeseen technical and methodological problems, and deviations from the original plan
There have been no unforeseen technical problems during the project. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter part of the data collection for governments in Central and Eastern Europe was unfortunately delayed. This data collection will be completed in the following year. Unfortunately, interview data will be completely or partially missing for some governments because some government representatives (often from right-wing populist parties) refuse to be interviewed by academics. As far as possible, we have instead relied on media reporting.
• The integration of work in the authority / organization, and how the infrastructure is to be maintained in the long term
Umeå University and the Department of Political Science have been helpful in supporting the infrastructure both financially and organizationally. The infrastructure is also an integral part of the department's research and teaching. We have secured funding for the infrastructure between 2022–2024 via the consortium Demscore (see demscore.se), which is partly financed by the Swedish Research Council's national research infrastructure grant and partly by Umeå University. We will actively work to obtain more long-term financing after 2024.
• Infrastructure accessibility and relation to requirements for open accessibility and Open Science
All data is available open-access, free of charge, via the infrastructure's website, as well as via open data repositories. During the project, the infrastructure's datasets has been downloaded approximately 1,000 times per year and the website has had approximately 1,500–3,000 unique visitors per year.
• International collaborations
The main international collaborations take place with the more than 50 colleagues around Europe, Canada and the USA who have helped to collect data for this and previous projects. In addition, the infrastructure has been cooperating with the Parliament and Government's database (https://parlgov.org/) for many years.
• Publications
To encourage participation and quality review of data, we invited the international "country experts" to participate in book projects and a Special issue. An edited book on Western Europe and Croatia was published by Oxford University Press in 2021 (Bergman et al., 2021) and a second edited book on governments and governance in Central and Eastern Europe is planned for publication in 2023. In addition, a Special issue in Western European Politics is under production.
The Swedish team has also been involved in various book projects that have used the data infrastructure, including a book on the protracted government formation after the Swedish parliamentary elections 2018 (Teorell et al., 2020), and a book on political polarization in Sweden (Oskarsson et al., 2021).
• Links to own website
Data and publications can be accessed via https://erdda.org/