Political Science Research Infrastructure: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is an international collaboration of more than 50 national election studies across the world. It represents a globally coordinated comparative project to study electoral behavior under varying institutional conditions. By collecting systematically comparable survey and associated institutional context information at the time of national elections and then making the resulting data freely available to the scholarly community, it provides a unique resource for comparative research on the ways in which institutions constrain and shape electoral behavior and attitudes toward democracy. CSES is a collaborative-survey and macro-data collection and distribution project. It serves as the mechanism for planning, merging into a single file, and distributing (a) survey data collected through a collaboratively developed ten-minute module administered identically as part of each country's regular survey study; (b) commonly coded social and economic background variables of the respondents; and (c) collaboratively specified macro-data on relevant characteristics of each country's government and electoral system, their political parties, and the candidates. CSES in not intended to support any individual country's data collection. Rather it provides the infrastructure for collaboration that allows the project to exist. Specifically, CSES is the mechanism for collaboration in designing the survey modules and specifying the macro-data to be collected; the agency for creating electronically-accessible merged data sets, documentation, and an archive of related material from the individual submissions of each participating country; and the medium of communication among participating (and potentially participating) countries-and thus, a facilitator of cross-national research. The CSES micro-and macro-datasets are made available to the research community immediately once they have been processed. One of the great virtues of CSES is its efficiency as "big science." All direct costs of data collection are borne by the individual participating projects which then submit the data at no cost to CSES for inclusion in the comparative dataset. As a result, funding is only needed for the centralized functions of the project, including providing organizational and administrative support to the CSES Planning Committee in designing and distributing the modules and making sure that as many countries as possible administer the module in the appropriate way; serving as the chief information office of the project, including providing organizational and administrative support to the CSES Planning Committee in designing and distributing the modules and making sure that as many countries as possible administer the module in the appropriate way; serving as the chief information office of the project, including assisting participating countries with questions they have regarding its administration; creating and distributing the merged data set and documentation files from the submissions of the participating countries; maintaining an auxiliary archive of the project; and maintaining the CSES web site, which is the primary location of the CSES archive, including further developing its capacities for international collaboration.