Manifesto Project Dataset

Abstract

The Manifesto Project Dataset provides the scientific community with parties' policy positions derived from a content analysis of parties' electoral manifestos. It covers over 1.000 parties from 1945 until today in over 50 countries on five continents.
The content analysis aims to discover party and presidential stances by quantifying their statements and messages to their electorate. A unified classification scheme with an accompanying set of rules was developed to make such statements comparable. Analysing manifestos allows for measurement of party and presidents' policy positions across countries and elections within a common framework. Manifestos are understood to be parties' only and presidential candidates' main authoritative policy statements and, therefore, as indicators of the parties' policy preferences at a given point in time.
The Manifesto Project Data Collection was originally created by the Manifesto Research Group (MRG) in the late 1970s and the 1980s. The work was continued under the name Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in the 1990s and 2000s. Since 2009 the Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) project updates and extends the dataset. It is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is still located at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.