Bjørnskov-Rode regime data version 6.1

Data source: Bjørnskov and Rode

Bjørnskov-Rode update and provide an expansion of Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland’s Democracy-Dictatorship dataset. The authors expand the coverage to a total of 192 sovereign countries and 16 self-governing territories between 1950 and 2024. They provide more institutional details relevant in the literature and finally, they introduce an indicator of successful and failed coups d'état.

Dataset type
Time-Series
Dataset level
Country
Last updated by source
2025-09-29

Citation

When using this dataset, please cite as:

• Bjørnskov, C., & Rode, M. (2020). Regime types and regime change: A new dataset on democracy, coups, and political institutions. Review of International Organizations, 15(2), 531–551.

Variables in this dataset

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Total number of chambers in parliament.

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Is the country a colony
QoG code: br_col

Is the country a colony? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Is the country's regime communist / socialist? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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No. of coups
QoG code: br_coup

Total number of coups.

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Is the country a member of the British Commonwealth? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Is the country democratic or not? Following Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland (2010). Dichotomous indicator of democracy based on a minimalist definition. A country is defined as democratic, if electi ...

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Whether an election at the Parliament held that year was postponed from an earlier date (0: No, 1: Yes)

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Alternative democracy indicator capturing degree of multi-party competition. (0: No elections; 1: Single-party elections; 2: Non-democratic multi-party elections; 3: Democratic elections).

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Whether an election at the Parliament was held that year (0: No, 1: Yes)

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No. of failed coups
QoG code: br_fcoup

Number of failed coups.

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Is the president interim / preliminary? (More than 2 presidents/year=1; Otherwise=0)

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Is the country a hereditary monarchy? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Is the monarch female
QoG code: br_monf

Is the monarch female? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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New constitution implemented
QoG code: br_newconst

Whether a new constitution was implemented (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Is the political system presidential? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Is the president female
QoG code: br_presf

Is the president female? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Is the electoral system characterized by including proportional representation? (0: No; 1: Yes)

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Did the main regime change
QoG code: br_regch

If a coded event, such as a change in the Presidency, took place after 01.07 it is assigned to the following calendar year in the data. In this case, the lag variable will be equal to one. For all cha ...

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No. of successful coups
QoG code: br_scoup

Number of successful coups.

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Full suffrage
QoG code: br_suff

Whether the electoral system attributes full suffrage (0: No; 1: Yes)

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