The study of Italian regional politics and the composition of the regional political class. The ITREGPARL dataset

Abstract

One of the most persistent challenges in the study of regional politics in Italy is the lack of systematized data and information about the composition of regional legislatures and governments and the profiles of elected officials. In this paper, we describe the ITREGPARL dataset, a new comprehensive dataset of Italian regional politics comprising 6077 regional politicians from 1993 to 2020. It includes information about regional councillors, regional ministers, presidents and vice-presidents of the regional council, regional presidents and vice-presidents. Along with socio-demographic characteristics - gender, age, previous profession, education - it includes data such as experience and incumbency, number of mandates, length of service and partisanship. It also includes region-level variables, such as geographical area, type of gender quotas and the regional authority index.