Change log

This change log records the most recent changes to the main datasets.

July 1, 2026

All REPDEM basic datasets

New governments formed between Janury 1 and 31 June 2026 have been coded (9 cabinets). Government terminations occurring in the same period have also been coded (9 cabinets).

April 28, 2026

All REPDEM yearly datasets

The yearly (periodized) datasets previously included additional rows for governments that both formed and dissolved within the same year. This has now been corrected for the following cabinets (listed by their IDs):
1033, 2027, 2045, 3003, 4005, 4049, 4059, 5002, 5028, 5030, 5036, 6012, 7010, 8009, 8031, 8035, 9015, 10015, 10023, 10028, 10030, 10059, 12017, 12027, 13008, 13017, 14008, 17004, 17012, 17030, 18007, 18015, 18017, 23012, 24003, 24010, 27012, 27022, 27035, 28018, 29007, 30020, 31012, 33019, 34022, 34052, 36019, 36035, 36059.

February 25, 2026

 

All REPDEM Basic datasets

New cabinets formed between September 2025 until the end of 2025 have been coded, with cab_id: 5044, 5045, 13037, 20020, 24021, 34069, 34070, 34071, 34072, 34073, 34074, 34075, 34076, 36063.

Terminations until February 2026 have been coded, with cab_id: 12034, 18027, 20019, 24020, 34068.

Discrepancies in seat figures for individual parties (seats_party) and the total number of seats in the lower chamber of parliament (seats_total) have been corrected for a number of cabinets. The full list of cabinet IDs is: 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1035, 2028, 2029, 2033, 2034, 2047, 3032, 3034, 3035, 3036, 3037, 3038, 3039, 3040, 3041, 5026, 5027, 5032, 5033, 5034, 5035, 5036, 5037, 5038, 5041, 5042, 5043, 6023, 6031, 6032, 6033, 7016, 7017, 7018, 7019, 7020, 7021, 7022, 7023, 9030, 9031, 9032, 9033, 10050, 10051, 10052, 10057, 10058, 10059, 10060, 10061, 10062, 10067, 10068, 10069, 10069, 12030, 12032, 12033, 13022, 13023, 13024, 13025, 13026, 13027, 13028, 14008, 14008, 14009, 14023, 14024, 14025, 14026, 15009, 15012, 15013, 15014, 15015, 16028, 16029, 17032, 18014, 18019, 18020, 18021, 18022, 18023, 18024, 20009, 20010, 20011, 21014, 21015, 21016, 21021, 21022, 22008, 23014, 23015, 23017, 24003, 24004, 24013, 24017, 24018, 24019, 26016, 26017, 26017, 26020, 26021, 26022, 26023, 27016, 27017, 27018, 27019, 27020, 27031, 27032, 27033, 27034, 27035, 27036, 27037, 28016, 28017, 28018, 28019, 29003, 29004, 29005, 29006, 29010, 29011, 29015, 29016, 29019, 29020, 30018, 30019, 30020, 30021, 30023, 34063, 34065, 34066, 34067.

All variables based on party seat shares have been recalculated for the affected cabinets.

September 30, 2025

 

All basic datasets 

New governments formed between July and mid-September 2025 have been coded (2 cabinets).

Government terminations occurring from July through mid-September 2025 have been coded (4 cabinets).

Cabinet dataset

New Variables 

A variable (cab_seatshare_partyX) that records the cabinet seat share for each party in a cabinet has been added to the cabinet-level datasets. A variable that measures the share of ministers for each party in a cabinet (partycab_minshare_partyX) has been added to the PAGED cabinet-level data.

Corretions

The distribution of minister portfolios (portfolioN_partyX) and the number of ministers (num_ministers) have been corrected for a number of cabinets. The distribution has been corrected in PAGED data, while the number of ministers has been corrected in both cabinet-level datasets (i.e., REPDEM basic and PAGED WE+CEE).

June 26, 2025

 

Cabinet and Party datasets 

New Variables 

This update introduces a new cabinet ID structure, which takes the name cab_id, and the old standard, which takes the name  old_cab_id. The old standard (variable old_cab_id) is structured as follows: The first two digits identify the country, and the last two digits identify the cabinet. The new identification standard (variable cab_id) is structured as follows: The first two digits identify the country, and the last three digits identify the cabinet.  

The REPDEM Basic Dataset also introduces a new variable named cab_caretaker, which more clearly indicates caretaker governments. Additionally, two variables—median_party_economic_1st and median_party_economic_2nd—indicate whether the party is the party of the median legislator on the economic left-right dimension. Details on how this variable has been coded are available in the “Note on coding principles.” 

To facilitate users who wish to exclude governments or years when fundamental democratic principles are not upheld in a country, this update also includes indices from V-Dem in the REPDEM Basic Dataset. Specifically, the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index, Liberal Democracy Index, Participatory Democracy Index, Deliberative Democracy Index, and Egalitarian Democracy Index are included. 

Variables that have been introduced in the Party Dataset include; 1) seatshare_party indicating the share of seats a party has in the lower chamber, 2) incumbent indicating if a party was a member of the previous cabinet, 3) three additional median party identifier variables (median_party_economic, median_party_ches_lrecon, and, median_party_ches_lrgen), and 4) preference variables for each party, drawing on the Manifesto data and Chapel Hill Expert Surveys.  

Cabinet updates 

Since the last update, new cabinets have been coded. The cabinets have cab_id: 1035, 2047, 6033, 8039, 9033, 13036, 14026, 18027, 20019, 21022, 27038, 27039, 33031, 33032, 36061 and 36062. 

Additionally, terminations and updates have been coded. The cabinets have cab_id: 5029, 5031, 5032, 5033, 5034, 5035,5043, 6032, 11005, 11010, 12032, 13035, 33030, 14025, 1709, 18018, 21018, 21019, 21020, 21021, 27037, 23027, 26018, 26019. 

Finally, the variable cab_duration_max  for cab_id: 32002, 32003, 32015, 32016, 32032, 34007, 34008, 34009, 34011, 34012, 34013, 34018, 34029, 34030, 36020, 36021 in the REPDEM Basic Datasets has been corrected to rectify a previous coding error. 

All preference-related variables in the cabinet dataset (e.g., variables beginning with cab_polar, cab_wpolar, etc.) have been recalculated to account for minor coding errors and improve party matching between datasets. 

Missing data 

This update addresses some missing data identified in previous updates. 

March 18, 2025

Five new countries (Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand) added to the REPDEM Basic datasets 

December 21, 2024

 

Cabinet and Party datasets

New Variables

This update introduces new dummy variables for each cabinet type. More specifically it introduces the variables cab_minority (indicating a minority cabinet), cab_sp_minority (indicating a single-party minority cabinet), cab_sp_majority (indicating a single-party majority cabinet), cab_coal_minority (indicating a minority coalition) and cab_sub_minority ( indicating a substantive minority cabinet).

Furthermore, the variable cab_duration_full has been added to indicate if the cabinet terminates due to technical reasons and its relative duration is greater than 90%.

Additionally, this update introduces the variable term_disc_conflict which captures the conflict between coalition parties (policy and/or personnel) thus summarising previous variables term_disc_conflict_pol=1 and term_disc_conflict_pers=1.

Finally, this update includes the new variable cab_seatshare_supported, which captures the cabinet seat share including formal support parties.

Cabinet updates

Since the last update, new cabinets have been coded. The cabinets have cab_id:  541, 542, 838, 932, 1122, 1232, 1425, 1517, 1732, 1825, 1826, 2327, 2419, 2622, 2623, 2819, and 3023.

The variable cab_composition for cab_id 540 and 2118-2120 in the cabinet datasets has been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.

The variable cab_strength_lower  for cab_id 525 in the cabinet datasets has been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.

Additionally, some parties were incorrectly coded as having seats in parliament that belonged to other parties. Both the Cabinet-level and Party-level datasets have been updated to correct these errors. The affected cabinets have cab_id: 540, 2618-2620, and 2807-2809.

Missing data

This update addresses the missing data identified in previous updates. It now includes full information on the variables pres_pop and invest_exist. All variables created from party manifesto data for Luxembourg were previously missing but have now been added.

Yearly and Monthly dataset

There were missing rows and additional rows for a few cabinets in the Governments Datasets – Monthly and Yearly Data. This has now been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.

September 30, 2024

 

Cabinet and party datasets

The variables dim_second_median and dim_second_median_2nd in the cabinet datasets and median_second in the party datasets have been corrected to rectify a previous coding error. This only affect cabinets in Western Europe (country_id = 1–17) and Croatia (country_id =30).

Additionally, a few parties were incorrectly coded as having seats in parliament that belonged to other parties. Both the Cabinet-level and Party-level datasets have been updated to correct these changes. The parties and cabinets are:

Cabinets

Incorrect party

Correct party

2326

A/P (230037)

JV (230019)

2415-2418

LPS (240017)

LVŽS (240001)

2923

Konkretno (290023)

Levica (290022)

 

Potential governments datasets

The WE+CEE potential governments dataset incorrectly included potential governments with a mix of parties represented in the lower house and parties represented only in the upper house for some bicameral systems, resulting in a bloated data set with a large number of effectively empty rows. This has been corrected, drastically reducing the number of potential governments.

 

New variable

A new variable, real_nonpartisan, has been added to indicate when the actually formed government was non-partisan, and take the value 0 when the actually formed government was partisan, and 1 when the actually formed government was non-partisan. When real_nonpartisan equals 1, this also means that no potential government in that choice set has real_gov equal to 1. Most users probably prefer to drop, or exclude, these observations from the analysis.

June 29, 2024

 

Cabinet and potential cabinets data sets

All polarization variables (cab_polar*, cab_wpolar*, parl_polar*, pcab_polar*, pcab_wpolar*) have been updated to rectify a previous coding error. The data sets where these variables have been updated are: Basic; WE+CEE; Potential governments, Basic; and Potential governments, WE+CEE.

 

New variables

To facilitate simpler matching between different cabinet-level data sets, a new variable, unique_id, has been created to identify unique combinations of cab_id and an alphanumerically sorted version of cab_composition2 or potential_government. The variable value is a SHA256 hash of concatenations of cab_id and the cabinet composition variable in the following format: cab_id.cab_composition2, e.g., 101.10001,10004,10005, with a resulting SHA256 hash of:  

5127ce47a681b23eda165288b856672a97712b78d032b1766733ac1a9ce748ff.

 

Changed variable names

The “potential_coalition” variable has been renamed to “potential_government” as it also includes single-party governments in the potential governments’ data sets.

 

Updated cabinet data

The following cabinets have been updated to include termination data (term_* variables and date-related variables): 246, 540, 837, 931, 1121, 1231, 1424, 1516, 1824, 2326, 2621, 2818, and 3022.

Party data sets

Corrected, erroneous manifesto_id values for several parties in Italy. The affected parties were 100020, 100024, 100035, 100036, and 100054 for cabinets 1066, 1067 and 1068.

 

Other corrected variables

 

Datasets

Variable

Cabinet ID

Old value

New value

Comment

Basic

cab_name

931

Vardakar II

Varadkar II

Fixed misspelling of Varadkar’s name

Basic

cab_composition2

1067

100031,100031,100060,100061

100031,100029,100060,100061

Incorrect party_id for party PD

Basic

cab_composition2

1068

100031,100018,100031,100020

,100061,100060

100031,100018,100029,100020

,100061,100060

Incorrect party_id for party PD

 

Basic

cab_party2

1067

100031

100029

Incorrect party_id for party PD

Basic

cab_party3

1068

100031

100029

Incorrect party_id for party PD

Basic

govtype

341

2 (Single party majority)

3 (MWC)

Previous value was incorrect

Basic

govtype

461

2 (Single party majority)

4 (Surplus majority government)

Previous value was incorrect

Basic

date_out

2736

2022-06-12

2023-06-12

Wrong year

Basic

year_month_out

2736

2022-06

2023-06

Wrong year

Basic

year_out

2736

2022

2023

Wrong year

Basic

cab_duration

2736

199

564

 

Basic

cab_duration_relativ e

2736

0.173

0.49

 

Basic

date_in

2737

2022-06-15

2023-06-15

Wrong year

Basic

year_month_in

2737

2022-06

2023-06

Wrong year

Basic

year_in

2737

2022

2023

Wrong year

Basic

cab_duration_max

2737

948

583

 

Potential governments

real_gov

1067

 

0

1

unique_id =

f3d10cee06ca4ee638b2b1c5fc9cc65e25d c38b67356a4d50780353d5761b670

Potential governments

real_gov

1068

0

1

unique_id =

c3a0009b262981b6127c07bc1361a9ad14 ad221f62884ca75f0fae1227798b12

 

March 22, 2024

Some minor errors in the data have been corrected:

  • The type of new government (newegov_type) variable has been updated and now includes non-partisan governments.
  • Various minor updates and corrections.

February 27, 2024

Since the December release there has been some minor changes and additions to the main datasets:

  • The ‘Type of government’- variable and the variable ‘cab_mwc’ corrected in the cabinet-level datasets.
  • Seats-variables moved to the end of datasets (i.e., seats_party X, upper_seats_party X).
  • Preference-variables and party codes for each government member added in the potential government datasets.
  • The Date format changed in the CSV-files to ”YYYY-MM-DD”.