Relative Political Capacity Dataset (Version 2.4)

The TRC project produces an ongoing cross-sectional, time-series dataset for 204 countries that is currently updated from 1960 to 2018. The Relative Political Capacity (RPC) dataset measures governments' ability to extract economic resources from that population, reach and mobilize their population, and allocate those resources to pursue desired policies. Governments seek to secure the long-term survival of the political structure and optimize socio-economic growth. Four interrelated measures of political performance are produced to capture those different elements:
1 Relative Political Extraction (RPE) captures the ability of governments to extract resources to advance government goals.
2. Relative Political Reach (RPR) measures the ability of governments to penetrate populations to advance government goals.
3. Relative Political Allocation (RPA) details the allocation of resources to optimize secure socio-economic development.
4. Absolute Political Extraction (APE), which is a new measure introduced in the 2020 update, provides an absolute measure of the extractive capacity of governments.

This measure represents a sign along the road to developing a social science indicator that would allow scholars to compare governmental functions across time, space, and across types of governments.