US Federal Bureaucratic Agency Ideal Points Data
In a recent article, Jowei Chen (University of Michigan) and I estimate the ideological scores of 74 US federal agencies on the Poole and Rosenthal NOMINATE Common Space scale. We use campaign contributions of bureaucratic employees as a means of estimating the ideologies of bureaucratic agencies and "bridging" those estimates with the ideal points of political actors in other institutions. Our method produces agency-level estimates for each presidential term from Clinton I (1993-1996) to Obama I (2009-2012).
Data Citation:
Chen, Jowei, and Tim Johnson, 2015. Federal Employee Unionization and Presidential Control of the Bureaucracy: Estimating and Explaining Ideological Change in Executive Agencies. Journal of Theoretical Politics 27 (1): 151-174. doi: 10.1177/0951629813518126.
Download Agency-Level Ideal Point Estimates (Excel CSV data file):
Chen_Johnson_AgencyIdealPoints.JTP.csv
Variables:
agency: Agency Name
agency2: Alternate Agency Name
OPMname: Standardized Agency Name in Office of Personnel Management's Central Personnel Data File
OPMcode: Standardized 2/4-Character Agency Code in Office of Personnel Management's Central Personnel Data File
clinton1: Agency's Estimated Common Space Score During 1st Clinton Term (1993-1996)
clinton2: Agency's Estimated Common Space Score During 2nd Clinton Term (1997-2000)
gwb1: Agency's Estimated Common Space Score During 1st George W. Bush Term (2001-2004)
gwb2: Agency's Estimated Common Space Score During 2nd George W. Bush Term (2005-2008)
obama: Agency's Estimated Common Space Score During 1st Obama Term (2009-2012)