Political performance measures
Relative Political Capacity
Relative Political Capacity (RPC) represents a sign along the road to developing a social science indicator similar to the ubiquitous applications of GDP and GDP per capita in economics. Political science has long valued the universality of these concepts and the powerful applications they allow for measuring and comparative purposes. It was the chase after the elixir of a political science counterpart that led to this volume. Despite its universal appeal, as a concept GDP remains limited in some ways. It does not include the non-monetized economy, the black market, the subsistence economy, or volunteer work, and it fails to address why the public sector is approximated by inputs not outputs. Yet, GDP remains the gold standard for cross national economic comparisons. And GDP per capita is the measure of choice for assessing the average productivity of individuals across and within nations.
RPC takes up the challenge for presenting a GDP-like indicator that would allow scholars and policy makers to compare governmental functions across time, space and across types of governments. Various attempts have been made to develop proxies for government performance but none of them have allowed scholars to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of governments, the performance of governments, vertically and horizontally – from the international to local levels. In order to find our GDP-like political indicator, members of the TRC developed, tested and integrated three distinct measures of political performance. They are Extraction, Reach, and Allocation. Extraction approximates the ability of governments to appropriate portions of the national output to advance public goals. Reach gauges the capacity of governments to mobilize populations under their control. Allocation evaluates the share of public revenues provided to competing national priorities contrasted to the optimal allocation based on maximizing economic growth. Each of these measures is tested empirically to determine if significant and substantive results followed from their applications. These tests establish the universality of the political performance concept.
In the attached files, you can find the aforementioned measures of political performance as well as the components used to calculate them. The codebook, which includes detailed information on calculation procedures and data sources, is also provided. For any questions or concerns about the dataset, please contact Ali Fisunoglu (afisun@gmail.com).
Religious Characteristics of states (RCS)
RCS Dataset Project (RCS-Dem 2.0)
The dataset reports estimates of religious demographics, both country by country and region by region. RCS was created to fulfill the unmet need for a dataset on the religious dimensions of countries of the world, with the state-year as the unit of observation. It covers 220 independent states, 26 selected substate entities, and 41 geographically separated dependencies, for every year from 2015 back to 1900 and often 1800 (more than 42,000 state-years). It estimates populations and percentages of adherents of 100 religious denominations including second level subdivisions within Christianity and Islam, along with several complex categories such as "Western Christianity." RCS is designed for easy merger with datasets of the Correlates of War and Polity projects, datasets by the United Nations, the Religion And State datasets by Jonathan Fox, and the ARDA national profiles. The dataset can be downloaded through the Association of Religion Data Archives website (ARDA). For any questions or concerns about the dataset, please contact Patrick James (patrickj@usc.edu).
Principal Investigators
Dr. Davis Brown, Nonresident Fellow, Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion
Dr. Patrick James, Dornsife Dean's Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California
Dyadic Annual State Interactions Dataset (DASID)
Dyad-Year Interstate Interactions
This dataset aggregates interstate interactions at the directed dyad-year level of analysis from 1985 to 2019. The raw events data are drawn from the Integrated Data for Events Analysis (IDEA) data set. Dyad-year aggregates capture the number of positive, negative, and ambiguous dyadic interactions each year as well as the sum of their mWEIS/Goldstein scores in terms of both positive and negative interactions. It also isolates the number of state visits from host to target state for each dyad-year. (Year 1985, 1986, and 2018 are incomplete, please use with caution).
For any questions or concerns about the dataset, please contact Nicholas Stowell (nicholas.stowell@cgu.edu). For questions about the raw IDEA data from which this dataset is derived, contact Doug Bond (doug.bond@vranet.com)
Investigators:
Dr. Nicholas Stowell, TransResearch Consortium Fellow Dr. J. Patrick Rhamey Jr., Associate Professor, Department of International Studies and Political Science, Virginia Military Institute Dr. Thomas J. Volgy, Professor of Political Science, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona Dr. Birol Yesilada, Director & Professor, Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Contemporary Turkish Studies Endowed Chair
DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS DATABASE (DIPCON)
DIPCON database records all embassies sent by all states to other states in the international system between 19603 and 2008 in Version 2.3 and 1970 to 2010 in Version 3.0, generally at five-year intervals (there are some time frames when the intervals are shorter to allow researchers to gauge, especially during periods of substantial change, whether or not diplomatic contacts are shifting quickly).
For more information, please contact Dr. Patrick Rhamey (rhameyjp@vmi.edu) or Dr. Thomas Volgy (volgy@arizona.edu).
NOTE:
There are two versions of the DIPCON Database. Version 2.3 was created March, 2010, and was noted as Version 2.3. It is authored by Patrick Rhamey, Kirssa Cline, Sverre Bodung, Alexis Henshaw, Beau James, Chansuk Kang, Alicia Sedziak, Aakriti Tandon, and Thomas J. Volgy. The second version, noted as DIPCON Database 3.0, was created June 2013, and is a modified version of 2.3: a) 1960 and 1965 are eliminated in the data due to numerous errors detected in the original source; b) several errors in the earlier version have been identified (errors were due to either problems in the original source or due to coding errors) and changed; and c) microstates (states with populations fewer than 200,000) are dropped from the data. This version is authored by Patrick Rhamey, Kirssa Cline, Nicholas Thorne, Jacob Cramer, Jennifer L. Miller, and Thomas J. Volgy (2013). “The Diplomatic Contacts Database,” Tucson: School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona (Version 3.0).
REGIONAL OF OPPORTUNITY AND WILLINGNESS (rowS)
The Regions of Opportunity and Willingness (ROW) Data provides a means for international relations scholars to incorporate analytically derived geographic spaces comprised of states with unique patterns of interaction into their empirical research. This definition of regions differs from those which use common historical, cultural, or ethnic definitions by focusing upon the actual observed capabilities and political interactions of states. Using an operationalization based upon political behaviors may be more appropriate for much international politics research, while traditional approaches may be more appropriate to others. Regardless, selection of regional definition and identification should be substantively justified at the outset of any analysis.
The dataset helps to identify regional clusters based upon whether a group of proximate states (1) is able to reach one another given their material capabilities and (2) choose to interact in their foreign policy activity. Further explanation is provided in the codebook, including a version history.
For more information, please contact Dr. Patrick Rhamey (rhameyjp@vmi.edu)