Selected Resources for POLS 385 (Comparative Constitutional Politics)
Fall 2007

Emory's Electronic Data Center

General Social Science Data Resources

Comparative Political Institutions

Economic and Social Indicators

CD-ROM/Non-Web Databases

Emory's Electronic Data Center (217 Woodruff Library)

http://einstein.library.emory.edu - The Data Center home page

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/links.shtml - The Data Freeway, a thematically-organized collection of links to on-line data sources

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/help_index.shtml - Help Pages for databases and data management

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/citation_guide.html - Guide for citation of electronic data sources

http://einstein.library.emory.edu/contact.shtml - Data Center contact information and hours

GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA RESOURCES

ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research)
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
The ICPSR is the largest collection of Social Science Data in the world. Topics included in the archive include: economics, government, health care, crime, education, etc. This resource is also available via Databases at Emory. The Data Center also maintains an archive of ready-to-use ICPSR datasets which are accessible via the search engine on the Data Center home page.

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

Democratization and Civil/Political Liberties:

Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset
http://ciri.binghamton.edu/index.asp
The CIRI Human Rights Dataset contains data on government practices with regard to human rights, including variables on torture, religious freedom, "disappearances," and workers' rights. The data cover the years 1981-2004. While registration is required to access the data, the registration is free.

Freedom House
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=1
Freedom House's annual Freedom in the World reports score countries on a 1-7 scale for both politcal rights and civil liberties. Users can download Freedom Houses' annual rankings via an Excel file with data going back to 1972; click on "Publications" and then choose "Freedom in the World."

Polity IV Project Homepage
http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
The Polity database contains information on regime type and political structures of independent states in the world system since 1800. Note that registration is required to access the data.

Institutional Structure and Quality:

Comparative Political Data Sets (CPDS)
http://www.ipw.unibe.ch/content/team/klaus_armingeon/comparative_political_data_sets/index_ger.html
The CPDS were produced by scholars at the University of Berne. They focus on OECD countries and on post-communist countries and contain much data on the structure of political institutions (e.g. federalism, judicial independence), as well as data on demographics, electoral results, and ideological compositions of governments. There are also variables for female participation in parliament. Please note the preferred citation format.

Institutions and Elections Project Dataset (IAEP)
http://cdp.binghamton.edu/IAEP.htm
The IAEP, which is housed at SUNY-Binghamton, contains data on political institutions for both democratic and non-democratic states. The data cover the period 1995-2005 and measure institutions such as legislatures, executives, judiciaries, central banks, and electoral systems.

Political Constraint Index (POLCON) Dataset
http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/henisz/
The POLCON dataset is managed by Professor Witold Henisz at the Wharton School of Management. The dataset measures political constraints on the executive in the form of multiple political actors (e.g. legislative chambers, courts). The dataset and codebook are downloadable upon provision of contact details.

Political Risk Services (PRS) Group Data
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/Risk-Data.html
The Data Center's holdings include data resources from the PRS Group and other sources that measure "risk" in the form of political (in)stability and institutional quality (e.g. levels of corruption).

World Bank Governance Data
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/data.html
The World Bank hosts a website devoted to data on governance and institutional quality and their relevance for economic development and performance. In addition to the main data page, the Bank also has a web inventory of data pertaining to institutional quality.

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INDICATORS

Economic Data:

International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Financial Statistics
http://www.imfstatistics.org/imf/imfbrowser.aspx?branch=ROOT
The IFS is a standard source of statistics on various aspects of international and domestic finance. Please note that this site is restricted to the Emory community. The IFS is also accessible via Databases at Emory and on CD-ROM in the Data Center.

Penn World Tables
The PWT are a good starting point for basic world economic data during the period 1950-2004. The most recent version of the PWT is available at http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/. An older version with coverage from 1950-1992 (and some variables not yet available in the newest version) can be found at http://datacentre.chass.utoronto.ca/pwt/.

World Bank Research Group
http://econ.worldbank.org/
The World Bank Research Group's site contains both papers and associated datasets from scholars affilated with the World Bank.

World Development Indicators (World Bank)
http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/
The World Development Indicators Website provides convenient access to almost 600 indicators on over 200 countries. Data is generally available from 1960 forward. The WDI is also accessible via Databases at Emory and on CD-ROM in the Data Center.

Polling/Survey Data:

Latinobarómetro Data
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/Latinobarometro-Data.shtml
The Latinobarómetro is an annual survey conducted amongst 18 countries in Latin America. The survey, which has been conducted since 1995, asks respondents about topics such as globalization, democratic governance and political institutions, "social capital," the environment, and gender issues. The Data Center has microdata files for this survey from 1995 through 2005.

Polling the Nations
http://poll.orspub.com
This website allows you to search a large database of surveys and opinion polls primarily in the United States, but also in European Union countries as well as in several other countries.

World Values Surveys Series
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
The World Values Survey is "a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It is conducted by a network of social scientist at leading universities all around world. The survey is performed on nationally representative samples in almost 80 societies on all six inhabited continents." It is an excellent source for cross-national survey data and is a widely-referenced resource. The Data Center has all four "waves" of the World Values Survey available here.

Social Indicators:

Global Market Information Database (GMID)
http://www.portal.euromonitor.com/portal
GMID is produced by Euromonitor International and contains time-series data (1977-present) on a very wide range of economic and social indicators such as income, GDP, consumer expenditures, and population demographics. The data are available through both Excel-ready spreadsheets and .pdf reports. GMID is also accessible via Databases at Emory.

PovertyNet: Data on Poverty
http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/data/index.htm
PovertyNet has brought together a variety of datasets pertaining to the study of poverty, along with other resources relevant for international development and economics. Be warned - the World Bank tends to change addresses for websites without warning.

United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/United-Nations-Surveys-on-Crime-Trends-and-the-Operations-of-Criminal-Justice-Systems.html
The UN makes available the results of seven global surveys on crime and criminal justice since 1970 in various formats. The NACJD also distributes some of these data. Some of the data files are also accessible via this UN site.

CD-ROM/NON-WEB DATABASES

Banks Cross-National Time-Series (CNTS) Data Archive
The Banks CNTS Data Archive contains time-series data from 1815-2005 on a wide range of political, economic, and social indicators. An older version of the archive is available here.

A complete list of the Data Center's non-web databases is available here. The databases are accessible via the Data Center's public workstations.

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