Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001

This study is the first module of an ongoing collaborative program of crossnational research among national election studies designed to advance the understanding of electoral behavior across polities. The data project, carried out in over 50 consolidated and emerging democracies, was coordinated by social scientists from around the world who cooperated to specify the research agenda, the study design, and the micro- and macro-level data that native teams of researchers collected within each polity. This collection currently comprises data from surveys conducted during 1996-2001 in Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United States. The format includes a common questionnaire module and background (demographic) characteristics of respondents, coded to agreed-upon standards. These data have been merged into a single crossnational dataset with a companion supplementary weighted data file. Measures included in the study focus on three main issues. The first topic explored is the impact of electoral institutions, with questions about parliamentary versus presidential systems of government (levels of accountability, responsiveness), the electoral rules on casting/counting of votes (issues of fairness, impact of voting), and political parties (identification, ideological distinction). The second major issue covered is the nature of political and social cleavages and alignments explored by questions such as left-right issue orientation of respondents vs. political parties. Lastly, the collection covers the evaluation of democratic institutions and processes through measures such as efficacy in political parties, elected officials, and respondents' satisfaction with democracy. Additionally, data were collected on voter turnout, voter choice, and respondents' age, sex, education, employment, and income.