The Center for the Study of Democracy maintains this online directory to various internet sources relevant to democracy.

The page on government web sites includes links to the national legislature and chief executive for most nations in the world. In addition, this page has links to the CIA World Factbook, embassies around the world, and various international organization.

The category of political institutes and libraries includes links to the other major university centers focusing on democracy, a list of the U.S. presidential libraries, and NGOs focused on democracy promotion. For instance, the Freedom House produces an annual measure of democratic and civil rights for most nations in the world, and the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute focus on democracy promotion.

There is an especially interesting collection of websites under the heading of political parties and elections. The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) has a variety of useful cross-national databases, which describe turnout in elections across nations, the representation of women in national parliaments, and an online democracy audit that allows you to rate democratic development in your country. Other sites, such as Parline and the index to political parties, provide information on the latest electoral results across nations, and the calendar of upcoming elections. The U.S. Federal Election Commission has a wealth of data on American elections, including a searchable database of who in your neighborhood has contributed to which campaigns.

The page on documents on democracy contains links to various online sources of major documents on the historical development of democracy. This ranges from a copy of the Magna Carta, to the Federalist Papers, to a selection of presidential addresses.

The data archives page is for academic researchers. It includes links to social science archives in the United States and internationally. These archives provide public opinion surveys and government statistics for use in social science research, such as the American National Election Study, the World Values Survey, and data from hundreds of scholarly projects. This page also has links to the data collected by researchers at the Center for the Study of Democracy data.

The CSD also publishes a research paper series that presents research on various aspects of the democratic process. These papers are available online for free downloading. We also provide several listings of books on democracy.  This includes book from recent Center projects, the publications of Center faculty, and listings of classics and new classic books on democracy.

The virtual library also includes links to legislative resources, such as links to national parliaments, and judicial resources on the court systems.

Taken together, this compliation of material is probably the largest collection of information resources related to the study of democracy around the world.

 

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