Political Science

For statistics on a wide range of topics in all fields arranged A-Z (crime, demographics, children, labor, etc.) this Middlebury Libraries Statistics Guide has links to both national and international resources.

The main economic & demographic statistics databases can be found on this separate Middlebury library guide. Start here if you need our top statistical databases with a variety of variables or specialized resources arranged by broad category.

See the Elections tab at the top of this guide instead (Elections - Elections Statistics).

From Stanford University. "Contains over 100 million political contributions made by individuals and organizations to local, state, and federal elections spanning a period from 1979 to 2012. A corresponding database of candidates and committees provides additional information on state and federal elections."

Track bills in Congress, voting and sponsorship records, committee activities, links to biographical information on legislators, bill statistics, and more. GovTrack.us, a project of Civic Impulse, LLC.

"Aims to measure the ideology of individual state legislators and state legislatures as a whole over the past several decades." See FAQ for info on download options.

Joint effort between UT-Austin, Penn State, U Washington funded by the NSF. The project tracks policy changes in the United States.  It  'collects and organizes data from various archived sources to trace changes in the national policy agenda and public policy outcomes since the Second World War.'

Search Supreme Court cases by a number of variables and perform online analysis. 'Contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court." Coverage: 1946+

From the Brookings Institute & American Enterprise Institute. Check website for later editions.

Congressional data generated by researchers Howard Rosenthal and Keith Poole that is available for download including roll call, interest group ratings, party unity, etc. "This may be one of the most frequented dataset among congressional scholars."

Aggregates official election results from all 50 states + DC from 1860 to present (once available). Free access for state and national level data and maps. County and congressional-district maps are free. For county data, see a librarian for password-protected access to our purchased datasets.

From CSP/INSCR (Center for Systemic Peace / Integrated Network for Societal Conflict Research). Data on state failure, political violence, terrorist acts, regime characteristics, coups, refugees, and more.

BTI publishes 2 rankings. 'The Status Index ranks the countries according to their state of democracy and market economy; the Management Index ranks them according to their leadership's management performance...' Also see their detailed country reports.

A collection of political and institutional data from Universität Bern Institute of Political Science

Access to a variety of conflict-related datasets.  Data is coded and users will need to consult codebooks to interpret the variables.  See also World Handbook of Politics IV for another set of country-level contentious politics event data.

"Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) Africa report, describes the progress made in low-income African countries to strengthen their policies and institutions that help to spur better development outcomes." CPIA scores assess the performance of countries along 16 dimensions of policy and institutional quality.

Various volumes cover 1648 - 1999.  Includes election statistics, heads of state, defence, parliaments, and other political facts.

Compiled by the Fund for Peace.  Along with the rankings, it provides country analysis pages.

PDF.  Published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  Also see their section on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling.

Scores for economic development, human development, participation & human rights, safety & rule of law. Also part of Bloomberg. Bloomberg is on a dedicated computer station behind the Research Desk of the Davis Family Library. Once logged on to the Bloomberg terminal, type BI CGOV [enter]. IIAG is listed under Data Library, then Country Data.

Compiled by Paul R. Hensel.  Includes a variety of political and economic data sources including those related to conflicts and disputes, human rights, terrorism, trade, investment, environment, countries, treaties, democracy, and much more.

"Contains information on the birthplaces and ethnicities of the effective leaders of 175 countries around the world in the 1989-2018 period, as defined in the Archigos database. The dataset is at the political leader level and reports information on 1044 effective leaders. Birthplaces of the effective leader are geo-coded, with highest precision being the village or city level."

International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) researcher's dataset 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B published by Political Risk Service. Contains 4 datasets on CD-rom with the annual average of composite, political, financial and economic risk ratings by country, for 140 countries, from 1984 through 2010. Also available via Lexis-Nexis PRS Group International Country Risk Guide and PRS Country Risk Service.

From Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Users will need to consult the appropriate code books to understand the data points.

Links to Security Council and General Assembly voting records. See also United Nations General Assembly Voting Data (data set - see codebook) by Voeten and Anton.

Commentary and facts on armed conflicts around the world since 1989.  Updated annually (free database from Uppsala Universitet). Alternative version (datasets for download).

From Inter-Parliamentary Union. Shows number and percent of seats held by women.

Published annually by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

The annual 'World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers' (WMEAT) provides annual military expenditures, arms transfers, armed forces, selected economic data, and relative indicators consisting of pertinent military-economic ratios. The data is accompanied by analyses and highlights.
Earlier editions in Govt. Docs. AC1.16:

From Reporters Without Borders.

From the World Bank. Governance indicators for 212 countries and territories over the period 1996– , for six dimensions of governance: Voice and Accountability; Political Stability and Absence of Violence; Government Effectiveness; Regulatory Quality; Rule of Law; Control of Corruption.'