On May 4th the Political Party Database Project successfully launched its database introducing to the public party organizational data for free usage from 19 countries and 122 parties. The conference was held in the Haus der Universität in Düsseldorf and welcomed 90 national and international guests: party researchers, fellow political scientists, practitioners and students discussed for one day what impact the project has and will continue to have. The project leaders Prof. Thomas Poguntke (Heinrich Heine University), Prof. Susan E. Scarrow (University of Houston, Texas, US), and Prof. Paul D. Webb (University of Sussex, Brighton, UK), who introduced the project and presented main findings, are pleased with the successful event. “We are proud that our database has been so well received by our target group. We hope for the same success for our book and regard the positive feedback as invitation to continue our work on the database” summarized the local host, Prof. Thomas Poguntke, chair of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute. On Friday, May 5th, the international research team held a closed workshop to discuss the future of the project, especially the next round of collecting data. The project aims for more cases, announcing data from Latin America (Brazil, Chile and Mexico), Japan, South Korea and Romania.
The next steps can be followed closely on the projects website, where the database is publicly available: http://www.politicalpartydb.org/
The book “Organizing Political Parties. Representation, Participation, and Power” will be published in June 2017 by Oxford University Press: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/organizing-political-parties-9780198758631?cc=de&lang=en&