The Political Settlements Dataset: Power Configurations and Political Blocs in the Global South, 1946-2018

Political scientists have long sought to understand power dynamics across the Global South, but efforts to systematically capture political power have been limited, and existing datasets have faced conceptual and measurement challenges. The Political Settlements dataset was developed to address these issues. This original expert survey-based dataset includes over 100 political economy variables coded for 42 countries from 1946 or independence to 2018 (totalling 2,718 country years). It allows for a detailed mapping of countries' power configurations, capturing information on the relative size, power and social composition of competing political blocs in society, as well as their internal cohesion, accountability relations and distribution of benefits. The dataset is expected to enable more direct and rigorous analyses of power differentials in the Global South and their impact on political and economic developments. This letter describes how the dataset was constructed, discusses its validity, and highlights some of its key features.

长期以来，政治学者一直致力于探究全球南方（Global South）的权力动态格局，但此前系统性捕捉政治权力的尝试均存在局限，现有数据集也面临概念界定与测量层面的诸多难题。政治和解（Political Settlements）数据集正是为解决上述问题而开发。该原始数据集基于专家调研构建，包含为1946年或各国独立起至2018年期间的42个国家编码的100余项政治经济变量，总计2718个国家-年度样本。该数据集可细致刻画各国的权力配置格局，捕捉社会中竞争性政治集团的相对规模、权力状况与社会构成，同时涵盖其内部凝聚力、问责关系以及利益分配等维度的信息。本数据集有望助力对全球南方地区的权力差异及其对政治经济发展的影响开展更具直接性与严谨性的分析。本短文阐述了该数据集的构建方法，探讨了其效度，并梳理了其若干核心特征。