Electoral Congruence Across Institutions: A Comparative Study and Improved Data Infrastructure

The research team will analyze data on election results and economic policies from democracies around the world to improve understanding of how election of non-mainstream political parties to upper chambers (i.e., senates) and presidencies affect government spending. They will directly compare data across countries. Results from this research will help scholars, decision-makers, and practitioners to understand better methods of designing constitutions and running legislature and parliaments, leading to more stable and effective economic policies.

The research team will also will gather, organize, and disseminate novel data on upper chamber and presidential election results as well as data on election results at local levels. Knowledge from this research can aid government agencies—both domestic and foreign— when they engage with new and emerging democracies to promote legitimate and peaceful election outcomes and stable, sustainable policies.

This project will also provide opportunities for students. The research team will rely on graduate and undergraduate students to assist in much of the research, providing them with valuable training experiences using complex data.

The team will compare data from democracies around the world, focusing on countries’ diverse partisan representation across branches of government. In particular, the researchers will analyze how partisan control and the different partisan coalitions represented within parliaments and across different branches—including presidencies—matter for government spending, public goods production, fiscal and macroeconomic policy, business investment, and the effectiveness of foreign aid.

They will make publicly available millions of records of fine-grained election results data for parliamentary (both upper and lower chambers) and presidential elections across most of the world’s electoral democracies and electoral autocracies. The team will create a novel data archive that will be available for all researchers to use. Data with greater detail, scope, completeness, and accuracy, compiled in useful formats, and provided free to the public, enable a wide range of illuminating research.

The research will help scholars, decision-makers, and practitioners to understand what leads to legitimate and peaceful political outcomes and to stable, effective policies. This project will help government agencies and non-governmental organizations manage expectations, evaluate program performance, and benchmark prospects for success against historical data by making such election data more accessible to researchers inside and outside of academia.

This project will also provide opportunities for students. The research team will incorporate graduate and undergraduate students to assist in much of the research, providing the students with valuable training experiences using complex data.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.