Positions and salience in European Union politics: Estimation and validation of a new dataset

Abstract: This article introduces the ‘Positions and Salience in European Union Politics’ dataset. The dataset comprises positional and salience estimates of more than 250 parties and governments in the European Union (EU).

These estimates, which all come with measures of uncertainty, pertain to 10 important EU policy domains as well as a European integration and a left—right scale. The dataset exploits statistics from hand-coded European party manifestos provided by the ‘Euromanifestos’ project and uses simulation to correct stochastic error. The manifestos are scaled using a technique for count data that employs principles from psychophysics.

For most European domestic parties and major European Parliament groups, the estimates range from 1979 to 2004, while for member state governments time-series between 1998 and 2007 are available. The dataset may be of use to scholars interested in European integration, Europeanization, compliance research or EU legislative decision-making.

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