Polity Project

Polity Project
Name	Polity Project
Type	Comparative political dataset
Founded	1970s
Founders	Ted Robert Gurr; Monty G. Marshall; Keith Jaggers
Country	United States
Languages	English
Disciplines	Political science; Comparative politics; International relations

Polity Project

The Polity Project is a long-running comparative dataset and analytical effort that codifies authority characteristics of national states and leadership patterns across time. It provides systematic annual indicators used by scholars examining Cold War dynamics, European Union expansion, United Nations peacebuilding, World Bank research, International Monetary Fund assessments, and policy studies in United States think tanks. The dataset has informed analyses of transitions such as the Glasnost and Perestroika period, the post-Soviet Union era, and democratization waves linked to the Third Wave and the Arab Spring.

Overview

The project produces ordinal measures that position polities on scales relevant to comparisons among countries like China, India, Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Cuba, Vatican City, North Korea, South Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.

History and Development

Originating in the 1970s with scholars including Ted Robert Gurr, the effort evolved through collaborations at institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Maryland, and Syracuse University. It paralleled datasets like the Freedom House ratings, the Human Development Index by the United Nations Development Programme, and the Varieties of Democracy project. Key contributors such as Monty G. Marshall and Keith Jaggers refined coding rules across episodes including the Vietnam War, the Iranian Revolution, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the breakup of the Yugoslavia. Funding and institutional hosting have intersected with agencies like the National Science Foundation, private foundations tied to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace-adjacent research, and university centers focused on democratization studies.

Methodology and Data

The dataset uses ordinal indicators for attributes such as executive recruitment, executive constraints, and political competition, applying coding rules to polity-years similar in scope to work produced by James C. Scott, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert A. Dahl, Juan J. Linz, and Barrington Moore Jr.. Data construction draws on primary sources like national constitutions, official gazettes, and archival material from cabinets and legislatures of states including Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Spain during the Francoist Spain era, Argentina under military juntas, and transitional constitutions in South Africa after Nelson Mandela's election. The coding protocol addresses event dating for episodes such as the 1968 protests, Prague Spring, and post-conflict settlements like the Dayton Agreement. Analysts combine manual coding with database management practices found in projects such as the Penn World Table and statistical packages used in Stata workflows.

Applications and Influence

Polity indicators feed into cross-national quantitative models in publications in journals associated with American Political Science Association membership, the European Consortium for Political Research, and citations in policy reports by institutions like the World Health Organization when linking political authority to public health outcomes. Scholars have used the data to study links between regime type and civil conflict in cases like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, and Darfur; to examine economic reform trajectories in China and India; and to assess human rights trends in contexts such as Guatemala and El Salvador. The dataset has been applied alongside event datasets such as the Correlates of War project, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the Global Terrorism Database, and macroeconomic indicators from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Criticisms and Limitations

Critiques echo those leveled against comparable efforts like Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy regarding measurement validity, coder reliability, and conceptual breadth. Scholars including those influenced by Michel Foucault and Samuel Huntington have questioned whether ordinal scales can capture regime hybridity observed in countries like Russia and Turkey, or the informal power networks documented in studies of Nigeria and Mexico. Methodological debates engage with issues raised by researchers at Princeton University, Yale University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, LSE, and the University of Chicago concerning temporal aggregation, interpolation of missing years, and handling of disputed sovereignty as in Taiwan and Kosovo. Critics also compare results with qualitative case studies of transitions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania to highlight potential mismatches.

Related Projects and Successors

The dataset sits alongside projects such as Freedom House, Varieties of Democracy, Quality of Government Institute, Polity IV-adjacent initiatives, the Correlates of War dataset, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, the Political Terror Scale, the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, and the Global State Fragility Index. Academic centers that built on or paralleled its approach include the Center for Systemic Peace, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Crisis Group, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Category:Comparative politics datasets