The CPD program was devoted to the comprehensive study of West European cabinets and is informed by and seeks to develop coalition research. The program was supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (1996-0801).

The various volumes produced within the CPD program describe every governing coalition, the parliamentary seat distribution after each election, and the institutional rules under which the parliaments operated from the post-World War II beginning of 17 national regimes to 1999. The program investigated the ways in which governance in parliamentary democracies is conditioned by institutional mechanisms. To uncover these dynamics, we drew primarily from analytical tools developed in modern game theory and institutional economics. The program generated several books and special issues (see link on the right).

This site contains a description of the program, a list of contributors to the program and a presentation of the publications that are a result of it. Not least, it is also possible to download the data collected from the Comparative Parliamentary Democracy Data Archive.

Publications using the corresponding data should acknowledge in writing that it is from the Comparative Parliamentary Democracy Data Archive and that it has been assembled for the purpose of Strøm, Kaare; Müller, Wolfgang C. and Bergman, Torbjörn, eds. (2008). Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.