QoG Social Policy Dataset

Jan Teorell - Lund University, Department of Political Science

Richard Svensson - University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science

Marcus Samanni - University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science

Staffan Kumlin - University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science

Stefan Dahlberg - University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science

Bo Rothstein - University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science

Sören Holmberg - University of Gothenburg, Department of Political Science

University of Gothenburg, Quality of Government Institute

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The QoG Institute is an independent research institute within the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. Overall 30 researchers conduct and promote research on the causes, consequences and nature of Good Governance and the Quality of Government - that is, trustworthy, reliable, impartial, uncorrupted and competent government institutions. The primary aim of QoG is to conduct and promote research on corruption. One aim of the QoG Institute is to make publicly available cross-national comparative data on QoG and its correlates.The aim of the QoG Social Policy Dataset is to promote cross-national comparative research on social policy output and its correlates, with a special focus on the connection between social policy and Quality of Government (QoG).

The main objective of our research is to address the theoretical and empirical problem of how political institutions of high quality can be created and maintained. A second objective is to study the effects of Quality of Government on a number of policy areas, such as health, the environment, social policy, and poverty.

The dataset was created as part of a research project titled “Quality of Government and the Conditions for Sustainable Social Policy”. The aim of the dataset is to promote cross-national comparative research on social policy output and its correlates, with a special focus on the connection between social policy and Quality of Government (QoG).

The data comes in three versions: one cross-sectional dataset, and two cross-sectional time-series datasets for a selection of countries. The two combined datasets are called “long” (year 1946-2009) and “wide” (year 1970-2005).

The data contains six types of variables, each provided under its own heading in the codebook: Social policy variables, Tax system variables, Social Conditions, Public opinion data, Political indicators, Quality of government variables.

QoG Social Policy Dataset can be downloaded from the Data Archive of the QoG Institute at http://qog.pol.gu.se/data/datadownloads/data-archive Its variables are now included in QoG Standard.

Samanni, Marcus. Jan Teorell, Staffan Kumlin, Stefan Dahlberg, Bo Rothstein, Sören Holmberg & Richard Svensson. 2012. The QoG Social Policy Dataset, version 4Apr12. University of Gothenburg:The Quality of Government Institute. http://www.qog.pol.gu.se Show less..