Except for the question of infrastructure, each of the points above is essentially some aspect of the central problem of projects such as the CSES. Because the project produces a public good (the dataset, which is made available immediately to all scientists in the world), the problem of incentives for participation obviously comes to the fore. What does a survey get in return for its expensive gift of a fifteen-minute segment in a national study? Or, to put it another way, what incentives does the project have to encourage participation, standardization of questions, and use of the full module rather than cherry-picked items?

One possible incentive would be to make the dataset less than a fully public good, by embargoing the data for some period, perhaps a year or two, during which only participating studies would be allowed to analyze it and publish work from it. We have avoided doing this, and are willing to tolerate a little less control in return for the benefits of a fully public good. Fortunately, most studies have found that participation in the project is viewed as a positive thing by their local funders, and this has given them a considerable incentive to participate in a way that at least does not deviate markedly from what the project needs. In a few cases the project has used the ultimate “incentive” by refusing to accept proffered contributions that departed too greatly from the common design. But this is always a bit of a balancing act.

The bottom line is that the CSES project has made available for the first time a body of data that allows us to address some very important questions about the interaction between citizens and their nations’ political institutions.

W. Phillips Shively is professor of political science at the University of Minnesota and chair of the CSES planning committee, 1997-2003.