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The Comparative Legislators Database

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Sascha Göbel Open the ORCID record for Sascha Göbel [Opens in a new window]  and
Simon Munzert Open the ORCID record for Simon Munzert [Opens in a new window]
Sascha Göbel*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Simon Munzert
Affiliation:
Data Science Lab, Hertie School, Berlin, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Knowledge about political representatives' behavior is crucial for a deeper understanding of politics and policy-making processes. Yet resources on legislative elites are scattered, often specialized, limited in scope or not always accessible. This article introduces the Comparative Legislators Database (CLD), which joins micro-data collection efforts on open-collaboration platforms and other sources, and integrates with renowned political science datasets. The CLD includes political, sociodemographic, career, online presence, public attention, and visual information for over 45,000 contemporary and historical politicians from ten countries. The authors provide a straightforward and open-source interface to the database through an R package, offering targeted, fast and analysis-ready access in formats familiar to social scientists and standardized across time and space. The data is verified against human-coded datasets, and its use for investigating legislator prominence and turnover is illustrated. The CLD contributes to a central hub for versatile information about legislators and their behavior, supporting individual-level comparative research over long periods.

Keywords

comparativecrowdsourcingdatasetdatabaseeliteslegislatorsparliamentpoliticianspolitical behaviorRWikidataWikipedia
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 1398 - 1408
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Supplementary material: Link

Göbel and Munzert Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GYSEGP
Link
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Göbel and Munzert supplementary material

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