Election studies & projects

ICORE
(International Committee for Research into Elections and Representative Democracy)

ICORE was established at an ECPR research session on electoral democracy which was held in Rimini in 1989. Its membership consists of the directors of established surveys of national electorates in Europe [tasks - in-house databases at ZA, Cologne]. ICORE creates the platform for start the longitudinal studies of CSES.

ICORE NEWS is the newsletter of ICORE. The aim is to publish two issues a year. Currently it is distributed among some 300 leading electoral researchers around the globe. It is edited by Hermann Schmitt at Mannheim University and sponsored by the MZES - Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (Mannheim Centre for European Social Research). Issues have been published since 1993.

CSES
(Comparative Study of Electoral Systems)

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems - CSES - is a collaborative program of cross-national research among election studies conducted in over fifty consolidated and emerging democracies. Data is made available by the CSES secretary and since then distributed via ICPSR and ZA. The goals of this unique program of research are threefold:

•  to illuminate how electoral institutions constrain the beliefs and behaviours of citizens to condition the nature and quality of democratic choice as expressed through popular elections;

• to understand the nature of political and social cleavages and alignments;

• to shed light on how citizens, living under diverse political arrangements, evaluate democratic institutions and processes.