The Comparative Policy Laboratory (COMPLAB) is a research infrastructure run in collaboration between Stockholm University and Uppsala University, that provides vital policy data across three different policy strands: environmental-, social-, and migration policy.
Building on T.H. Marshall’s ideas about social citizenship, SPIN makes available comparative data on social rights and duties of citizens, thereby moving research beyond analyses of welfare state expenditures. The SPIN database is instead oriented towards analyses of institutions as manifested in social policy legislation. Data are carefully collected in a coherent and consistent methodological manner to facilitate quantitative research of social policy across time and space. To date, SPIN covers 36 countries, of which several have data on core social policy programs from 1930 to 2019.
The GRACE project addresses two central questions in the study on environmental governance: 1) Which factors explain cross-national differences in environmental policy outputs, and 2) Are environmental policy outputs linked to reductions of environmental harm? By compiling a data set of longitudinal and comparative environmental policy outputs in 38 countries for the period 1970-2010, this project will be able to address fundamental questions about society’s ability to respond to environmental problems, as well as provide evidence-based policy advice on the relative strengths and weaknesses of different policy instruments.
The Migration Policy Database (MIGPOL) is a comprehensive open-access data infrastructure for scholars and students who are interested in the ways public policies intersect with the movement of individuals across international borders. It brings together the most advanced and academically rigorous projects in this area of research and makes their data available and easily accessible. MIGPOL’s core ambition is, in other words, to “assemble – rather than reinvent – the wheel” (Helbling & Solano 2021) of comparative migration policy research.
Demscore currently includes data from COMPLAB SPIN, GRACE, and MIGPOL.
SPIN, the Social Policy Indicators Database, include seven datasets covering different aspects of social policy available, two data additional datasets are in progress.
GRACE, Governing the Anthropocene – Environmental Policy and Outcomes in a Comparative Perspective, is a longitudinal and comparative study on environmental governance has created a dataset of national policy responses for environmental management and protection in 37 countries for the period 1970-2022.
MIGPOL, The Migration Policy Database consists of a range of indicators compiled on behalf of leading data projects in the field of comparative migration policy research. It also contains original data on the rights of irregular migrants which will soon be added to Demscore.
Above is an overview of the data sources provided by COMPLAB and how they are prepared and included in Demscore.
The figure below is an overview of which variables can be retrieved in which other Output Units within this Module. The labelled arrows further indicate which translation methods we use and in what way observations are translated to each other.
You can find a detailed explanation of all Units and more information on their programmatic construction on the Documentation page and in the Demscore Methodology Document.
