Institutions and Elections Project

The Institutions and Elections Project (IAEP) at Binghamton University is a major data collection effort led by Professors Patrick Regan and David Clark. IAEP is a collection of data on political institutions and practices, and political elections for all countries in the international system between 1972 and 2005. The project is unique in its breadth of variables, ranging from legislatures to central banks, and in its breadth of countries, collecting such data on elections and institutions for both democratic and authoritarian states. The data were collected in two phases between October 2005 and September 2007. The data are identified by Correlates of War country codes and year, and thus are readily conformable with other state-year data sets (e.g. Polity). The objective is to describe the formal political institutions that are in place, even if practice does not comport with those formal rules, and to account for all election events. The data include all countries with populations over 500,000 spanning the period from 1972 through 2005 The data are broken down into nine sections, each capturing a different element of the political institutions that govern in each country.^{[ref 1]}

Variables and Subcategories

This dataset contains indicators in the Legitimacy Variables and Grievance Variables categories. The subcategories represented are Human Rights and Discrimination Indicators and Regime and Institutions.

This data can answer questions like:

• Are there banned parties in this country?
• Is the constitution in effect in this country?
• Does the country hold national elections for the executive?
• Is there an official state party?
• Can the constitutions be formally amended?

Data Quality

The data for each country/year is recorded as of January 1st of that year. If institutions change during the year these changes will show up in the following year (unless they changed on January 1st). The exception to this is the data on elections, which are recorded on the date of the election in the current year. Sometimes this can lead to apparent ambiguities in the data, where for instance, there might be no institutional mechanisms for an election in a given year, but there are elections that take place. The interpretation of this is that on January 1st of that year there were no mechanisms for elections, during the year the institutions changed and elections were held. In the following year evidence of that institutional change will show up in the data. If the constitutional arrangements within a country change during the year and after Jan.1st, it will be recorded that one constitution when out of force (and the date) but all the variables for that year will be based on the constitution that was in force on January 1st.

One of the central foci of the data involves the makeup of the legislative and executive branches of government. The legislative branch tends to be fairly straight forward. There is one or there isn’t; it/they have a certain number of seats or they don’t. The executive branch is considerably trickier and a quick perusal of some of the more well-established democracies will make this clear. Executives tend to be appointed, anointed, elected, and they can be appointed, anointed, or elected by different sets of constituencies. For example, a prime minister can be elected by popular vote by virtue of party leadership, and only standing for election in his legislative district; a prime minister can be elected by the legislature, and when elected as such may but may not need be a member of that legislative body; and a prime minister can be appointed by an elected president who stood the test of a popular plebiscite. An executive can also be a dictator who comes to power by force of arms, or a King who is confirmed by a small group of elite members of a council, but who might be subject to dismissal by that council. In short the number of possible permutations of how an executive comes to power, how many of them share power at one time, and how they are removed from power is rather large. The authors record executive selection based on four questions that taken together describe the makeup of the executive branch of government.^{[ref 2]}

References

1. ↑ "The Institutions and Elections Project," Binghamton University, http://www2.binghamton.edu/political-science/institutions-and-elections-project.html.
2. ↑ Patrick Regan and David Clark, "User’s Manual for the IAEP Dataset" The Institutions and Elections Project, Binghamton University.

Regan, Patrick and David Clark. 2007. Institutions and Elections Project.