The project and the data sets

Most political systems consist of multiple layers. Still, data sets are predominantly situated at a single territorial tier, encouraging methodological nationalism, regionalism and localism. We present three new integrated data sets that include electoral, institutional, ideological, and government composition data on the country and regional level (RD|CED, RED, and RPSD). With this data, we cover 337 country elections on the regional level, 2,226 regional elections, and 2,825 regional cabinets in 365 regions of 21 countries from 1941 to 2019, accounting for 800 political parties and their ideological positions. Combined, those data complement and extend existing data sets and facilitate the study of political interaction across levels. Data are available via Harvard Dataverse or can be accessed through the GitHub repository. We conclude with an agenda for future cross-level studies.

Data and documentation

Version 1 of the data and codebooks are available in the Harvard Dataverse.

Click here!
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z0B94F

Contribute

Interested in contributing to our project? You can access our Github repository and data and recommend additions and corrections to the data for future data versions!

Access Github repository!

Data characteristics

Citation

Röth, Leonce, Saldivia Gonzatti, Daniel, Kaftan, Lea and Kaiser, André (2025). Studying Multi-Level Systems with Cross-Level Data. Introducing Three Integrated Datasets; British Journal of Political Science, 55:e19. doi:10.1017/S0007123424000553

Article DOI: doi:10.1017/S0007123424000553.

Replication HD repository.

News

02-2025: Our data release paper has been published in BJPols! The datasets are now available via Harvard Dataverse.

07-2024: There's now a Github repository for further development. Contribute!

06-2024: Our dataset release paper has been conditionally accepted at the British Journal of Political Science.

Related Data Projects

• Manifesto Project
• Chapel Hill Expert Survey
• Regional Authority Index
• Regional Manifesto Project
• ParlGov Project
• Arjan H. Schakel's projects
• WHO governs. Party Systems and Governments Observatory
• Comparative Political Data Set
• Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
• Psephos Adam Carr's Election Archive
• Observatory for Political Conflict and Democracy (PolDem)

Acknowledgements

We are very thankful for all the student assistants that have worked on the project over the years: Ben Stefani, Çağan Varol, Keno Röller-Siedenburg, Kristina Ophey, Marcel Buchwald, Mingyi Zhang, Rebecca Kittel, Saskia Gottschalk, Taiwo A. Ahmed and Vera Serbenyuk.

We further had a fruitful collaboration with external researchers such as Arjan Schakel (University of Bergen), Sandra León (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and Emanuele Massetti (University of Trento).

Funding

We are very thankful for the generous funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Grant numbers: KA 1741/10-1 and KA 1741/10-2.

DFG project website

Publications (Selection)

• Garritzmann, J. L., Röth, L., & Kleider, H. (2021). Policy-making in multi-level systems: Ideology, authority, and education. Comparative Political Studies, 54(12), 2155-2190.
• Röth, L., & Kaiser, A. (2019). Why accommodate minorities asymmetrically? A theory of ideological authority insulation. European Journal of Political Research, 58(2), 557-581.
• Röth, L., Kaiser, A., Varol, Ç., & Sadioğlu, U. (2016). Centre‐periphery conflict and ideological distance in Turkey. Swiss Political Science Review, 22(4), 585-607.