Other Political Data (updated 2005)

The variables are broadly divided into the following categories: Political Regime type, Political Participation, Military Expenditure, General Fiscal Policy, Dependency and Debt Measures, and General Trade indicators. The set includes measures from economic datasets that can reasonably be assumed to measure political decision making.

Since different measures are used in different ways by researchers, the choice whether to include a variable in the economc.dta or politicl.dta was oftentimes quite subjective. We have chosen for example to treat inflation as an economic indicator rather than a policy variable and to treat government consumption as a policy variable. In any case, the variables from the two sets can easily be merged.