Political Leaders’ Affiliation Database – Political Leaders' Affiliation Database

This website provides access to a broad range of sources on the personal characteristics of political leaders (see Data page). We also provide our own data – the Political Leaders’ Affiliation Database (PLAD) – which contains a wealth of information, including geocoded information on the birthplaces and ethnicities of the effective leaders of 177 countries around the world over the 1989-2023 period.

Please cite the PLAD as:

Bomprezzi, Pietro; Dreher, Axel; Fuchs, Andreas; Hailer, Teresa; Kammerlander, Andreas; Kaplan, Lennart; Marchesi, Silvia; Masi, Tania; Robert, Charlotte; Unfried, Kerstin (2024). Wedded to Prosperity? Informal Influence and Regional Favoritism. CEPR Discussion Paper 18878.

News:
The 7.0 version of the PLAD is now available, including data up until 2023.

“Wedded to Prosperity? Informal Influence and Regional Favoritism” won the 2023 Best Paper Award of the Annual Conference on the Political Economy of Aid