Power & Stability of Regimes at Sub-National (state) Level in Post-1990 India: a dataset from the DEEP project [Deciphering an Epidemic of Epic Proportion: the role of state and tobacco industry in tobacco control in post-liberalised India (1990-2017)]

This dataset provides information about regimes in 10 Indian States (Karnataka, Kerala, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Bihar, West Bengal, Meghalaya, and Nagaland) for the period of 1990-2017. The dataset contains variables that are proxy of 'power' and 'stability' of state-level regimes for successive rounds of elections to legislative assemblies covering 1990-2017 period. These data were collected from the Election Commission of India and State Election Commissions available through their websites. We also used free internet searches for specific information including Wikipedia pages of state assembly elections as well as political leaders.
The following points will help better understand the dataset and its strengths and limitations:
There are two sheets in the associated MS Excel file. The first one, 'Regime variables' provides data about five variables chronologically for the successive election rounds (covering the 1990-2017 period) for 10 Indian states. These variables include: (1) names of chief ministers including indicating president rule in these states; (2) tenure of these chief ministers including duration of president rule if any; (3) names of political party/parties forming governments in these states; (4) type of governments: a single party majority government, a single party majority government that keeps alliances with other parties, and a coalition (multi-party) government; (5) number of seats (constituencies) won by various political parties in a given election round. The second sheet, 'Abbreviations-Political Parties' provide expansion of short forms used for some of the political parties in the dataset in the first sheet.We curated this dataset as part of the broader project wherein we were interested in assessing the power and stability of state regimes. We used the type of government and the winning part/parties share of total seats as proxy measures for the power of the regime. We calculated the regime switch (how frequently the regime change in successive election rounds) and the average tenure of chief ministers as proxy measures for the stability of the regime. It was not easy to find all the data we needed from one source. We could not locate certain data e.g. data on exact composition of political coalitions especially when frequent changes took place in such coalitions post elections in a few states such as Meghalaya and Goa. So, there are likely to be errors and omissions in data. We tried our best to capture data from authoritative sources as much as possible given the limited time and resources we had.This dataset was produced as part of the broader research project that explored the political economy of tobacco, titled “Deciphering an epidemic of epic proportion: the role of state and tobacco industry in tobacco control in post-liberalised India (1990-2017)”. We thank the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance for funding this project through the Intermediate (Clinical and Public Health) Fellowship awarded to Upendra Bhojani (IA/CPHI/17/1/503346).