Data

Following the publication of the first scientific results from the project on a special issue of West European Politics, data from the ICCP 2017-18 data collection round have been released to the scientific community through the GESIS international data archive.

Unfortunately, due to a security incident recently occurred at GESIS, that archive does not currently allow to download the ICCP datasets. As a backup, you can now download the full ICCP dataset directly from this ICCP website, but please always refer to the GESIS study page for documentation.

Please always recognize data use through the following reference (this corresponds to the current version 2.0.0; might be updated in the future):

De Sio, Lorenzo; Emanuele, Vincenzo; Maggini, Nicola; Paparo, Aldo; Angelucci, Davide, D’Alimonte, Roberto (2019): Issue Competition Comparative Project (ICCP). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA7499 Data file Version 2.0.0, doi:10.4232/1.13374

We recommend all scholars interested in using the data to first read the Introductory Guide, and to peruse the various codebooks (especially the one of the Twitter dataset) to get a correct understanding of the various – sometimes innovative – measures included in the various datasets.

Among these, there are new, issue-yield based measures that were developed for the project, allowing:

  • the identification of optimal issue opportunities that were available to each party before the final campaign;
  • whether and to what extent different parties indeed exploited strategically these available issue opportunities in their campaign activity.
High issue yield is identified by a combination of broad goal support at large, combined with almost unanimous support within the party base. The issue yield configuration for the FN allows to understand the room for electoral expansion exploited by this party, combining issue goals that – in 20th century terms – would both belong to classical conservative or progressive orientations.

Preliminary results show that some parties were more strategic than others in these terms; and that such parties were indeed rewarded by better electoral performance. This casts a new light on the 2017-18 wave of elections; not necessarily a success only for “populist” parties, but for all those parties that actively exploited their available issue opportunities. Thus, with clear strategic suggestions even for the future strategies of mainstream parties.