Data
The Comparative Legislators Database (CLD) is a one-stop shop for rich, diverse and integrated individual-level data on national political representatives. The database contains information for over 67,000 contemporary and historical legislators from 16 countries. In our project, we unite collaborative micro-data collection efforts. We bring these together through the use of Wikipedia and Wikidata.
Data access
There are multiple ways to access the data depending your use-case. You can download the files for individual legislatures or use the legislatoR package for the software environment R.
- Download the files from the Dataverse: .csv | .rds | .sqlite
- Learn to use the legislatoR package
Database structure
The CLD is a relational database. This means that all data can be joined with the Core table via one of two keys - the Wikipedia page ID or the Wikidata ID.
Learn more about the database structure.
Data coverage
In its current version, the CLD covers the following legislatures:
| Country | Legislative sessions | Politicians (unique*) | Integrated with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria (Nationalrat) | all 27 (1920-2019) |
1,923 | ParlSpeech V2 (Rauh/Schwalbach 2020) |
| Brazil (Câmara dos Deputados) | 38-57 (1947-2022) |
3,474 | |
| Canada (House of Commons) | all 44 (1867-2021) |
4,567 | |
| Czech Republic (Poslanecka Snemovna) | all 9 (1992-2021) |
1,124 | ParlSpeech V1 (Rauh et al. 2017) |
| France (Assemblée) | all 16 (1958-2022) |
4,263 | |
| Germany (Bundestag) | all 20 (1949-2021) |
4,371 | BTVote data (Bergmann et al. 2018), ParlSpeech V1 (Rauh et al. 2017), Reelection Prospects data (Stoffel/Sieberer 2017) |
| Ireland (Dail) | all 33 (1918-2020) |
1,408 | Database of Parliamentary Speeches in Ireland (Herzog/Mikhaylov 2017) |
| Israel (Knesset) | all 25 (1949-2022) |
1,022 | |
| Italy (Camera dei deputati and Senato della Repubblica) | all 19 (1948-2022) |
5,149 | |
| Japan (Shūgiin) | all 49 (1890-2021) |
6,581 | |
| Netherlands (Tweede Kamer) | all 65 (1815-2021) |
1,887 | |
| Scotland (Parliament) | all 6 (1999-2021) |
348 | ParlScot (Braby/Fraser 2021) |
| Spain (Congreso de los Diputados) | all 14 (1979-2019) |
2,616 | ParlSpeech V2 (Rauh/Schwalbach 2020) |
| Turkey (Büyük Millet Meclisi) | all 27 (1920-2018) |
5,298 | |
| United Kingdom (House of Commons) | all 58 (1801-2019) |
11,321 | EggersSpirling data (starting from 38th session, Eggers/Spirling 2014), ParlSpeech V1 (Rauh et al. 2017) |
| United States (House and Senate) | all 117 (1789-2021) |
12,593 | Voteview data (Lewis et al. 2019), Congressional Bills Project data (Adler/Wilkerson 2018) |
| 16 | 529 | 67,945 | 12 |
* We only count legislators with a unique Wikipedia page or Wikidata ID. Sometimes legislators do not have either. Such cases are indicated by the string “miss” in the wikidataid or pageid.