The research project Representative Democracy in Europe examines the key actors of representative democracy in the 27 EU member states: voters, political parties, parliaments and governments. Central to the functioning of representative democracy is the election of political representatives to the national parliaments by the citizens, who forms the government and the stability of governments.

Consequently, this project researches citizens’ opinions and those of their political representatives: political parties, parliaments and governments. Through the European Representative Democracy (ERD) Dataset, we have access to a data source of high quality, containing information on governments, parliaments and institutions. By combining these data with opinion polls, as well as with surveys of political parties, we can analyze key research questions about representative democracy in Western and Eastern Europe.

As this is mainly an applied research project, the data collection is more limited. Some additional data are available in the replication files for the publications within the project. In addition, in the project we have corrected and updated some key variables in the ERD dataset, as well as, added the causes of cabinet termination for each cabinet. These updates will be included in the final release of the ERD dataset.

The research project is financed by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for the period 2012 – June 2019.