The Political Party Database Project is a cross-national initiative to establish and update an online public database as a source for key information about political party organizations.

This database provides standard coded variables describing party resources, party decision processes, and the outcome of decision-making procedures for parties in many representative democracies.   The project also provides a party statute archive designed for students, scholars, and practitioners.  Both resources can be accessed through this website.

PPDB Round 1a data covers 122 parties in 19 countries in the period 2010-14. Round 1b data covers an additional 24 parties in 6 countries for 2013-16. Round 2, released in March 2022, covers 288 parties in 51 countries for 2016-19, with 427 variables. See the full country list here. Data collection for Round 3 is underway in 2024.

An overview of the project and a summary of first results can be found in “Party Rules, Party Resources and the Politics of Parliamentary Democracies: How Parties Organize in the 21st Century”, in the December 2016 issue of Party Politics.

Organizing Political Parties (Oxford University Press 2017) reports the first result from the PPDB Round 1 data. Its chapters document variations in party organization in contemporary parliamentary democracies, and they explore how these differences affect representation and political participation. For more information, check out the publisher’s website. 

For more about Round 2 and some first results from this see “Intra-party decision-making in contemporary Europe: improving representation or ruling with empty shells?” in Irish Political Studies.