The Political Party Database is a central source for key information about political party organization, resources, leadership selection, and partisan political participation in many representative democracies. Data files are available in SPSS, STATA, and CSV formats, and include a PDF with text responses for appropriate variables. The database was created by authors Thomas Poguntke, Susan Scarrow, and Paul Webb from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
Use Cases
- Comparative analysis of party organization structures across multiple democracies based on the described variables.
- Modeling the relationship between party resources and leadership selection methods mentioned in the description.
- Text analysis of qualitative responses on partisan political participation from the included PDF.
Strengths
- Data is available in three common analysis formats: SPSS, STATA, and CSV.
- Includes supplementary qualitative text responses in a PDF document.
Limitations
- Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
- Collection Method
- Likely compiled from surveys or expert coding of political parties.
- Geography
- Many representative democracies (specific countries unknown).