Description & Citation--Study No. 7534

• Bibliographic Description
• Scope of Study
• Methodology
• Access and Availability

Bibliographic Description

07534

Comparative Political Parties Data, 1950-1962

Janda, Kenneth

National Science Foundation

Janda, Kenneth. COMPARATIVE POLITICAL PARTIES DATA, 1950-1962. Compiled by Kenneth Janda, Northwestern University. ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1979. doi:10.3886/ICPSR07534.v1

Scope of Study

This data collection contains the observed characteristics of 158 diverse political parties operating in 53 countries between 1950 and 1962. The variables consist of both substantive coding of party characteristics and data quality measures. A base of 111 variables place party characteristics in a conceptual framework of 11 categories: institutionalization, governmental status, social attraction, social concentration, social reflection, issue orientation, goal orientation, autonomy, degree of organization, centralization of power, coherence, and involvement. Every variable that was coded was selected because of its relevance to a concept in the framework. The remaining variables are derived measures of the quality of those data.

international politics, political behavior, political organizations, political parties

Albania, Australia, Austria, Benin, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Democratic Republic), Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Ghana, Global, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Kenya, Korea (North), Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Soviet Union, Sudan, Sweden, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zimbabwe

• 1950--1962

Political parties of the world in existence between 1950 and 1962.

observational data

Methodology

In order to ensure representation of the full range of party diversity, a stratified sampling procedure was used. First, all countries with functioning parties of some durability during 1950-1962 were identified and classified into one of ten cultural-geographic "areas" of the world. From each of these ten areas, five countries were selected at random, producing a set of 50 countries representing all ten areas. Three countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada) were not drawn by this random sample procedure and were added later. From the 53 countries, 158 parties that met minimum levels of strength and stability were used in the sample.

books, articles, newspapers, party documents, and government reports

All archived data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. The archive also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, the archive performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Performed consistency checks.
• Standardized missing values.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Access and Availability

Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.

1984-06-27