The Latin American Legislators Dataset

Abstract

This article describes a dataset of legislators in Latin America. It is a large data collection effort containing data on all elected legislators in the 18 Latin American countries with competitive elections since 1978 or transition to democracy up until 2023. The Latin American Legislators Dataset includes data both on unicameral legislatures as well as on the lower and upper chambers in bicameral legislatures and currently comprises 31,724 observations of 21,807 unique legislators in 259 elections. The dataset is an important resource for the study of legislative elites because it comprises information on various legislator attributes (esp. gender, elite turnover, seniority and inter-chamber switching).