Voteworld: Comparative Legislative Behavior

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Voteworld is a UC Berkeley web-based research platform to facilitate large-scale empirical, comparative studies of legislative behavior. The project serves as a repository archive providing open access to all registered roll call data from legislatures in democracies across the world. It includes both significant advances in data collection as well as the development of web-based software to allow researchers from all over the world to upload and format data so as to allow for comparative analysis of legislative behavior. Voteworld also makes it possible for researchers to upload alternative statistical packages making use of legislative databases. Additional web-based packages have been developed to allow students and ordinary citizens to query the data. The merit of the proposal consists in providing a public good for the research community to advance significantly the field of comparative politics. Making national databases available in a comparative perspective will: 1) significantly improve the analysis of legislative behavior; 2) encourage the advancement of statistical and econometric estimation techniques relying on roll call votes using both longitudinal and cross-country data; and 3) spur the development of theories of voting behavior and coalition formation. The externalities generated from such a public good are expected to be substantial for advancing our understanding of democratic institutions worldwide just as they have been substantial from similar initiatives (on a smaller scale) at the level of American politics. In particular, the level and volume of scientific inquiry in the comparative analysis of legislative behavior is expected to reach a higher level due to: a) the broader and easier access to roll call data bases from across the world; b) their availability in comparable formats flexible enough to encompass specificities of legislative rules in individual countries; and c) the availability of competing statistical packages to analyze the data. The broader impact of the proposal is mainly twofold. First, it will contribute to a better understanding of democracy by encouraging a significant research development in the field of comparative politics both in terms of quality and quantity. Second, it will significantly contribute to better transparency by bringing legislators across the world closer to citizens by making data on legislative activity directly accessible. This is especially important for new and emerging democracies where there are important dynamics of learning and adjusting to new institutions.