The WhoGov dataset enables researchers to take a new approach to studying governing elites in autocracies and democracies. The authors provide bibliographic information, such as gender and party affiliation, on cabinet members in July every year in the period 1966-2021 in all countries with a population of more than 400,000 citizens. In total, the dataset contains data on 50,197 cabinet members in 177 countries, adding up to 8,057 country-years. WhoGov makes it possible to answer questions such as; what is the share of female cabinet members globally, which type of regime has the highest cabinet turnover, and have cabinets increased in size over time? and many others. The dataset is highly flexible and can be used to calculate countless variables of interest, including the number of female ministers, ministerial experience, cabinet turnover and cabinet size at the country-year level.
The data is based on cabinet compositions in July for all years apart from 1966, where data was only available for September and 1970, where we are using January instead of July. Apart from the cross-sectional dataset that is used for the QoG Compilations, within-country dataset is available in the original source.