Political Science

Provides a definitive, comprehensive picture of all aspects of political life. The eight volumes cover every field of politics, from political theory and methodology to political sociology, comparative politics, public policies, and international relations.

Focuses on the major theories, concepts, and conclusions that define the field of comparative politics, analyzing the similarities and differences between political units. Entries cover such topics as failed states, grand strategies, soft power, capital punishment, gender and politics, and totalitarianism, as well as countries such as China and Afghanistan.

The SAGE Handbook of Comparative Politics presents in one volume an authoritative overview of the theoretical, methodological, and substantive elements of comparative political science. The 28 specially commissioned chapters, written by renowned comparative scholars, guide the reader through the central issues and debates, presenting a state-of-the-art guide to the past, present, and possible futures of the field.

Profiles provide coverage of history, politics, and economic backgrounds of countries and territories. Also includes backgrounds on key institutions and audio and video clips from BBC archives.

Developed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the World Factbook offers updated country profiles providing information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues of 267 world nations. The website provides a comprehensive collection of world maps that can be freely downloaded. Also includes a Guide to Country Comparisons. Categories include geography, people and society, the economy, communications, transportation, and the military. Information can be downloaded into data files.

Provides country-by-country data (e.g., population, languages) as well as detailed information about political history, politics, social movements, economics, and current issues.

Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) country analysis and forecasts cover over 200 countries and highlight political, economic, and business developments in all significant markets, both established and emerging. For political reports of each country, go to the top navigation bar and choose Topics > Politics. Each report provides a political environment rating, the latest political developments, a 5-year political stability forecast, policy trends, election watch, international relations, and a Democracy index.

Provides country information on Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. Includes country profiles; macroeconomic statistics, forecasts, and analysis; reports on financial markets, companies, and industries; exchange rates; analyst reports; and business news.

Europa World Plus is the online version of the famous reference source, Europa World Year Book. It provides political, economic, and historical information, including statistics, for over 250 countries and territories.  Europa World Plus also contains the nine-volume Europa Regional Surveys of the World series.  

Although primarily used in the fields of business and economics, FitchConnect also provides in-depth political risk ratings and analysis, including 10-year forecasts. Each report includes a "Political SWOT" (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) assessment of current political events and a "Political Outlook" section.

Freedom House is a non-partisan organization that rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World report. Freedom House provides full country narrative reports for each country.

The Statesman's Yearbook provides information on international affairs, covering key historical events, population, city profiles, social statistics, climate, recent elections, current leaders, defense, international relations, economy, energy and natural resources, industry, international trade, religion, culture, and diplomatic representatives, as well as fact sheets and more.

Country profiles prepared by World Bank staff are available for over 150 nations. The site provides direct links to the World Bank data catalog for each country along with access to the latest publications, news items, and development topics published by, or related to, World Bank operations.

A source for theory and research in international affairs. It includes scholarship, working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals, case studies for teaching, and policy briefs.

PAIS contains journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies for public affairs, public and social policies, and international relations.

Provides online access to abstracts and full-text articles on public policy research and analysis from think tanks, university research programs, research organizations, and publishers. Offers access to U.S. foreign and domestic policy papers and gray literature, with abstracts and links to timely reports, papers, and documents from think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research institutes, advocacy groups, agencies, and other entities.

Provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration. 67% of the more than 1500 monitored journals are published outside the United States, and there are nearly 500,000 records beginning in 1975. Some of the records have full-text links and coverage including all aspects of political science, as well as international relations and comparative politics.

The Berggruen Governance Index Project is a collaborative project between the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Berggruen Institute. The current iteration of the Index examines the performance of 134 countries in key areas over a 20-year period to advance our understanding of why some countries are better managed and enjoy a higher quality of life than others. The index analyzes the relationship between democratic accountability, state capacity, and the provision of goods to serve public needs.

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of cross-national research among election studies conducted in over fifty states.

The "Comparative Political Data Set" (CPDS) is a collection of political and institutional country-level data provided by Klaus Armingeon, Sarah Engler and Lucas Leemann at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). It consists of annual data for 36 democratic countries for the period of 1960 to 2020 or since their transition to democracy.

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, provides statistics at the European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions. Eurostat also provides data on other selected countries (e.g. non-EU OECD members, non-EU members in Eastern Europe). Users can bulk download tables and access full metadata and documentation for data that measures indicators across a range of socio-demographic and economic indicators.

IMD World Competitiveness Online is a unique and comprehensive database on the competitiveness of nations. It provides data on competitiveness rankings on criteria related to government efficiency, domestic economy, international trade, international investment, business efficiency, and infrastructure. Allows free download access to 3 indicators (1) Competitiveness Ranking, (2) Digital Competitiveness Ranking, and (3) Talent Ranking.

The OECD iLibrary provides comparative economic and political statistics and data coverage of 38 OECD countries including development, education, energy, environment, technology, and social issues.

ParlGov contains comparative statistical data and information for all EU and most OECD democracies (37 countries).

The QOG Institute at the University of Gothenburg studies good governance and corruption on a global scale. QoG provides a range of datasets available for free, and data visualization tools. QoG Standard Dataset contains the most qualitative variables from the Standard Dataset. The QoG Expert Survey is a dataset based on our survey of experts on public administration around the world, available in an individual dataset and an aggregated dataset covering 107 countries.The QoG OECD dataset covers countries who are members of the OECD. The EU Regional Data consists of 450 variables from Eurostat and other sources, covering three levels of European regions - country, major socio-economic regions and basic regions for the application of regional policies.

Self-described as the largest available dataset on members of government across time and countries. WhoGov, contains yearly data on members of cabinets in 177 countries during the period 1966–2016.

WDI Online is a comprehensive database on development data covering more than 700 development indicators, with time series for 208 countries, and 18 regional and income groups. The extensive collection of comparative development data includes population, income, social, economic, financial, natural resources, and environmental indicators for more than forty years (starting in 1960 where data are available).