Gilbert POLS 102 Spring 2025: Country Assignment #2

Full profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions.
Includes audio and video clips from BBC archives.

The BTI is the result of the collaboration of nearly 300 country and regional experts from leading universities and think tanks worldwide. The project analyzes and compares transformation processes towards democracy and inclusive market economy worldwide.

A comprehensive resource of facts and statistics on more than 250 countries and other entities. Older editions can be found at this site.

An authoritative reference work, providing a wealth of detailed information on the political, economic and commercial institutions of the world. Last edition available is 2011.

Each volume provides a vast range of background material, statistics, directory information and expert analysis of the social, political and economic situation for each of the individual countries within that region.

Each volume provides a vast range of background material, statistics, directory information and expert analysis of the social, political and economic situation for each of the individual countries within that region.

Each volume provides a vast range of background material, statistics, directory information and expert analysis of the social, political and economic situation for each of the individual countries within that region.

Each volume provides a vast range of background material, statistics, directory information and expert analysis of the social, political and economic situation for each of the individual countries within that region.

Each volume provides a vast range of background material, statistics, directory information and expert analysis of the social, political and economic situation for each of the individual countries within that region.

Freedom House is a leading advocate of the world's young democracies, which are coping with the debilitating legacy of statism, dictatorship, and political repression.

Timely and thorough coverage of political controversies and political parties.

The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living.

Select a country, then scroll down to the Universal Periodic Review--the most comprehensive of the reports.

Data on Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness,
Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption for over 200 states from 1996 to the present.

Classification of political regimes as democracy and dictatorship. Classification of democracies as parliamentary, semi-presidential (mixed) and presidential. Classification of dictatorships as military, civilian and royal.

Measures various indices of political freedom around the world. Separate reports on democracy, press freedom, and internet freedom are also available.

Dataset informing the book How Dictatorships Work by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz.

Annual Polity scores have been plotted for each of the 167 countries currently covered by the Polity V data series for the period 1800-2018.

(Some V-dem indicators go back to 1789 until the present). V-dem has 5 indices of democracy’s quality. The first index (electoral democracy) is required for the resulting 4 entitled: liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. Conceptually electoral democracy is equivalent to Dahl’s classic formulation.

The V-Dem codebook is vast! The following pages are most crucial to understand their measures: Page 37, Pages 43-56. You can then use the search function by individual variable names to look at how individual variables are scaled and coded. https://www.v-dem.net/static/website/img/refs/codebookv111.pdf

To easily look up countries and graph them without downloading the large dataset (not to select the original scale to interpret these graphs): https://www.v-dem.net/graphing/graphing-tools/

See also page 40 of the following report: https://www.v-dem.net/documents/29/V-dem_democracyreport2023_lowres.pdf
To read more about the Regimes of the World classification system used in some of V-dem’s work: Regimes of the World (RoW) .pdf

The PARLINE database contains information on the structure and working methods of 270 parliamentary chambers in all of the 193 countries where a national legislature exists.

Information on national elections around the world, subnational elections of high interest,
political parties and candidates, referendum provisions, news on election-related laws and developments, political institutions and electoral systems, election results and voter turnout.