Mapping established democracies: Integrated data on parties, elections and cabinets

Work on democratic delegation needs coherent and integrated recording of parties, elections and cabinets to study aspects of democratic representation such as electoral dynamics, cabinet formation and policy making. In this article, we present the methodological design of the ParlGov database and demonstrate how its operationalization of parties, election results and cabinets adds to a better understanding of political representation. The most recent version of the database includes 1177 parties, 735 elections (580 national, 155 European Parliament) and 1067 cabinets for democratic elections in 37 established democracies from 1945 to 2015. With this information we provide a definition of relevant political parties, a systematic recording of electoral results including electoral alliances and an adjustment to the definition of cabinets to account for potentially short lived cabinets. A replication of a prominent study by Hix and Marsh (2007) on second-order elections to the European Parliament (EP) demonstrates the added value of an integrated data source for a better understanding of electoral dynamics.