Construction and Use of a Relational Database to Analyze the Careers of Professional Politicians in Poland, 1985–2007
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Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University Libraries in partnership with IFiS Publishers
Abstract
This article describes a unique version of a longitudinal database featuring the Eastern
Europe Parliamentarian and Candidate Database (EAST PaC). This version contains
contextual and biographical information on career politicians from Poland, 1985-2007.
I define career politicians as those who, three times during the period covered in the data,
were granted a parliamentary seat in either the upper (Senat) or lower house (Sejm). As
part of this project, I reconstructed the political biographies of career politicians. Based on
practical experience in using these data, I propose the use of relational databases as a best
practices approach to manage data of this type. I describe the need for relational databases
in general, and describe in detail how to apply them to longitudinal data consisting of
parliamentarians and their contexts.
Description
Keywords
professional politicians, parliamentarians’ careers, relational database, longitudinal data
Citation
Ask: Research and Methods. Volume 23, Issue 1 (2014), pp. 115-134