Party Organizations Around the Globe. Introducing the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization Dataset (V-Party)

Abstract

Although party organization plays a key role in a range of theories from democratic accountability and representation to democratic breakdown or the electoral success and persistence of parties, data on party organizational features is quite sparse, scattered and available for a limited set of countries and parties. To advance global research on party organizations, we present the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization Dataset (V-Party) – the most comprehensive dataset to date, including a wide range of information about organizational features and party stances of more than 1,900 parties in 168 coun- tries between 1970 and 2019. Here, we focus on new measures of parties’ territorial reach, ties to social organizations, candidate nomination procedures, personalization, and internal cohesion. Focusing on the organizational features of political parties, we demonstrate the usefulness and the potential of V- Party following Adcock and Collier’s (2001) three-pronged strategy to showcase V-Party’s face, crite- rion and construct validity.