1. Comparative Political Data Sets I, II and III University of Bern www.unibe.ch Presentation by: Jacopo Gandin Giulia Mallone

2. Overview Comparative Political Data Set is a project developed by a pool of scholars by the University of Bern (Armingeon, Potolidis, Gerber, Leimgruber et a.). It collects a wide range of data,drawn from various sources, that can be useful for comparative research among OECD and Eastern European countries. It is composed by 3 data sets I) OECD countries 1960- 2007 II)former Communist countries 1990- 2004 and III) OECD countries 1990- 2007 Variables are explained through codebooks.

3. Data set I It collects annual data for 23 OECD countries since 1960 to 2007. For Greece, Spain and Portugal data are available for the democratic period. The wide range of variables is divided into 16 macro- groups about institutional. Economic, social and demograpohic issues. Some variables are originals of this project, while some others come from other databases (e.g. OECD, ILO).

4. Data set I General: Year of observation Country Country code Governments: 1. Cabinet composition - parties in percentage of total cabinet posts, weighted by days. Gov_right; gov_cent; gov_left. 2. Cabinet composition govparty - Schmidt Index: indicator of party composition of government that classifies governments as leftist and non-leftist with respect to parties’ shares of cabinet seats. Scale 1-5. 3. New party composition of government gov_new: 1 - change; 0 - no change. 4. Ideological gap between old and new cabinets gov_gap: difference of govparty index values. 5. Classification on type of government (6 types) gov_type. 6. Number of changes in government per year gov_chan.

5. Data set II This data set refers to 28 post-Communist countries. From 1989 to 2004. Former USSR countries data are included since their independence, in 1991/ 92 Variables are divided in 9 groups about institutional, political, social and economical sphere. There are some annex data reporting scores on 7 institutional rules, coded by assigning a value to some Constitution articles of the country.

6. Data set III This dataset shows variables for 35 OECD countries, starting from 1990 until 2007. This datasets differs from the previous ones for some reasons. 1) Cyprus and Malta are included. 2) From data set II are included only former- Communist countries that join the EU. 3) some variables have a diffetent operationalisation (e.g. Cabinet composition left- centre- right) 4) there are some variables not included in the previous indexes, especially about Fiscal and Social Policy. Variables are divided into 7 macro- groups, and as well as dataset II some are explained with an annex.