Dataset: Swiss Municipal Monitoring 1988-2017 / Schweizer Gemeindemonitoring 1988 bis 2017

Municipalities are an important pillar of the Swiss federal system. As the 3rd tier government, they provide a wide range of public services to citizens. Although the high relevance of the municipal level, comparable municipal data presents a particular challenge. Federalism leads to the fact that the higher tier government (the cantons) produce their own municipal statistics, which, however, can hardly be compared with each other or they provide only very general information. This data gap is closed by the Swiss Municipal Monitoring (1988-2017). At periodic intervals (1988, 1994, 1998, 2005, 2009 & 2017), uniform and detailed data on the local political-administrative systems are comprehensively collected from all municipalities in Switzerland (conducted six full census survey so far). The data provides in-depth information on a wide range of relevant topics such as local government, local autonomy, public services, legislative systems, public finances, local parties, public administrations as well as local reforms such as municipal amalgamations, inter-municipal cooperation and public management reforms. As in most of the surveys between 80% and 90% of Swiss municipalities participated, the dataset provides an encompassing base for scientific research. Thus, this large N dataset does not only cover a wide range of different subjects in the area of political sciences (i.e. policy analysis), sociology as well as administrative sciences and public management. It also enables a comprehensive comparative analysis of municipalities in a divers linguistic-cultural environment (quadrilingual Switzerland: German, French, Italian, Romanic) over a period of more than 30 years. The respondents who participated in the survey were the municipal secretaries, who hold a key position in the local political-administrative systems in Switzerland.