Comprising 172 years of European history (from 1848 to 2020), the Who governs dataset
provides comprehensive and highly detailed information on the partisan composition
of European governments, matching these data with information on those aspects of
party politics that can either help to understand the dynamics of the governmental
arena or are under the direct influence of the composition of governments. Most of
the variables represent fundamental and well-established dimensions of party politics,
such as the number of new parties or the fragmentation of the party systems, but some,
most importantly party system closure, are more novel. Variables have been designed
so that they can be applied to a maximum number of cases across time. Currently the
dataset includes 68 different historical democratic periods, 753 elections, and more
than 1817 parties and 1586 cases of government formation.
