The file contains political data for the 16 western European countries. Four tables are given for each country.

• The first table reports electoral results.
• The second table contains political indicators related to the legislature as a whole.
• The third table reports political indicators related to each specific cabinet .
• The fourth table reports the ideological location of the main parties in each country.

Measures are computed as described in the discussion paper by F. Carmignani (1999), "Measures of Political Instability in Multiparty Governments:a new Data-Set with Econometric Applications" Glasgow University Discussion Paper in Economics N. 9916. and in F. Carmignani (2002), "Political Data for Applied Political Economy Research", University of Milano Bicocca, Dipartimento di Economia Politica Working Paper 43.