DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02683.v1
title: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001
title: Version 1

description: This study is the first module of an ongoing collaborative program of crossnational research among national election studies designed to advance the understanding of electoral behavior across polities. The data project, carried out in over 50 consolidated and emerging democracies, was coordinated by social scientists from around the world who cooperated to specify the research agenda, the study design, and the micro- and macro-level data that native teams of researchers collected within each polity. This collection currently comprises data from surveys conducted during 1996-2001 in Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United States. The format includes a common questionnaire module and background (demographic) characteristics of respondents, coded to agreed-upon standards. These data have been merged into a single crossnational dataset with a companion supplementary weighted data file. Measures included in the study focus on three main issues. The first topic explored is the impact of electoral institutions, with questions about parliamentary versus presidential systems of government (levels of accountability, responsiveness), the electoral rules on casting/counting of votes (issues of fairness, impact of voting), and political parties (identification, ideological distinction). The second major issue covered is the nature of political and social cleavages and alignments explored by questions such as left-right issue orientation of respondents vs. political parties. Lastly, the collection covers the evaluation of democratic institutions and processes through measures such as efficacy in political parties, elected officials, and respondents' satisfaction with democracy. Additionally, data were collected on voter turnout, voter choice, and respondents' age, sex, education, employment, and income.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: Micro-Level Data 
 DS2: Supplementary Weight Data
description: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Series
description: Users should check the CSES Web site for additional information about this survey, errata notes, and other materials. This version corresponds to CSES Module 1 Full Release of August 4, 2003. 
The original study title has been changed from 1996-2000 to 1996-2001 to reflect the inclusion of 2001 data from several countries.
The 1996-2001 data file includes 2002 Portugal data. The 2002 Portugal data are different from the 2002 Portugal data in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 2001-2006 (ICPSR 3808).
The crossnational dataset integrates data already fully processed by the study staffs of the individual countries, without further processing except for that which was essential for merging the data into the combined file. Where coded data for any deposited variables deviated too much from the coding scheme required by the CSES codebook, data for such variables were excluded.
For some countries, a machine-readable file for appendix documentation was not deposited or was incomplete. Wherever possible, Secretariat staff incorporated documentary information from other deposited sources, including printed matter such as tables of frequency distributions with assigned code labels.
Although provision was not made for weight variables in the design of the CSES codebook, many countries deposited one or more weights together with CSES variables. Proper integration of weight variables into the combined CSES file is planned for the future. As a temporary measure, this combined CSES dataset is being released with a mergeable "Supplementary Weight File" that contains respondent ID numbers and the individual weight variables received.
The codebook for Part 1 of this collection contains characters with diacritical marks used in many European languages, which are unprintable in the original character format being released.
description: All age-eligible citizens, or citizens of voting age of collaborating countries.
description: The data collection is a pooled crossnational sample of age-eligible citizens, yielding 62,409 cases.