A global perspective on party organizations. Validating the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization Dataset (V-Party)

Abstract

Party organization is a central concept in comparative politics. Yet, data on party organizational features is sparse, scattered and available for a limited set of countries and parties. To advance global research on party organizations, we present the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization Dataset (V-Party) – the most comprehensive dataset to date, including a wide range of information about organizational features and party stances of more than 1900 parties in 168 countries between 1970 and 2019. In this paper, we focus particular attention on new measures that relate to parties' territorial reach, ties to social organizations, candidate nomination procedures, personalization, and internal cohesion. We validate these new measures using Adcock and Collier's (2001) three-pronged validation approach, looking at content, criterion and construct validity, to showcase and emphasize the potential of V-Party.