Building Historically-Oriented Datasets: A Practical Guide

Political science has been experiencing an upsurge in the construction of original, historicallyoriented datasets. Whether cross-national or subnational, these data collection efforts are increasingly recognized as invaluable to the field—providing resources of enormous long-term benefit and enabling richer empirical analysis of a broader range of research questions. There is a large and rich literature on conceptualization and measurement in the social sciences, which provides an important foundation.