About Parline
Highlights.
Parline is the global reference source for data on national parliaments. The Parline database contains around 600 fields on the structure, composition and functioning of parliament, as well as the results of parliamentary elections. Data in Parline is gathered from national parliaments through a network of Parline Correspondents.
Parline is:
- Global: Every national parliament, big or small
- Authoritative: Data comes direct from the source – parliaments themselves
- Comparative: Creating possibilities for new perspectives
- Open: Offering tools that allow users to access, obtain and reuse data freely
Parline is the official source of data for UN SDG indicators 5.5.1(a) on women in national parliaments and 16.7.1(a) on leadership positions held by women and youth.
Top resources in Parline include the IPU’s monthly ranking of the percentage of women in parliament. Check how your country is ranked!
Parline can also help to answer many questions about parliaments, such as:
How is Parline organized?
Data in Parline is based on five main entities:
- Country
- Parliament
- Chamber
- Specialized body and
- Election
Here are some of the ways to access data in Parline. For a full list of fields in Parline, see the Data dictionary.
Parliamentary chambers: Every parliamentary chamber has its own page, which contains all data available for that chamber, organized into groups of fields:
- Basic information
- Elections
- Parliamentary mandate
- Law-making, oversight and budget
- Working methods
- Administration
- Specialized bodies
Reports: There are different types of reports that bring together data in one place:
- Lists of Speakers, Secretary Generals, Elections, Specialized bodies
- Global and regional averages of women in parliament, age of parliamentarians
By theme: Data on women in parliament, data on age of parliamentarians
Data tools: There are different types of data tools:
- Compare: Maps and charts to visualize data for 85 comparative fields
- Data explorer: Build your own datasets by selecting any of the 500+ fields in Parline
- Parline API: Programmatic access to Parline data
The IPU data catalogue provides access to other IPU datasets that are not included as fields in the Parline database
Who uses Parline?
The Parline database is widely used and referenced by parliaments, policymakers and researchers. It is the official source of data for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators 5.5.1 and 16.7.1(a).
Parline users fall into various categories with differing requirements. Broadly, they include:
- Parliaments – International relations departments use Parline for up-to-date contact information and changes to parliamentary leadership (Speakers, Secretaries General), and for preparing background information and briefings for bilateral and parliamentary visits. Libraries and research services or staff of parliamentary committees use Parline to conduct topical research to inform their work or draw comparisons between the functions and working methods of other parliaments.
- Researchers, students, academics – are big consumers of comparative data and often utilize specific data points from Parline to draw a correlation between larger trends, outcomes or behaviors. For example, a comparison of electoral systems, special measures for women’s representation in parliament, or the percentage of women in parliaments.
- International organizations – The United Nations uses Parline data as part of the global SDG indicators to monitor the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A variety of other international organsations also use Parline data. For example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses Parline data in their annual “Government at a Glance” report and Social Institutions and Gender Index, while the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the World Bank integrate Parline data into their Index of African Governance (IIAG) and World Development Indicators, respectively. Bodies such as the UN Electoral Affairs Division (DPPA), among others, use Parline data to prepare their missions and reports.
Examples of reports that cite Parline data:
- Global companies – use Parline data in, for example, their political risk analysis reports.
- Journalists – use Parline data to support stories that they are preparing on, for example, salaries of parliamentarians, size of parliamentary staff, etc., or to provide statistical snapshots of given information, derived from aggregated data and maps and charts generated in the Compare data on parliaments section.
The IPU always wants to learn more about how, what and where Parline data is used. This supports our efforts to improve the database to meet the needs of users, and to better understand the impact of Parline. Feel free to contact [email protected] to share feedback on data points and/or past, ongoing or current research that utilizes Parline data. In the future, there may be an opportunity for the IPU to feature select work.
SDG indicators 5.5.1(a) and 16.7.1(a)
Parline is the official source of data for the parliamentary aspects of two UN SDG indicators:
- 5.5.1 Proportion of seats held by women in (a) national parliaments and (b) local governments
- 16.7.1 Proportions of positions in national and local institutions, including (a) the legislatures; (b) the public service; and (c) the judiciary, compared to national distributions, by sex, age, persons with disabilities and population groups
Data used for these indicators is stored in Parline and is reported to the UN SDG Indicators Database every year. This data contributes to global monitoring of progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
SDG indicator 5.5.1(a) reports on number of seats held by women members in single or lower chambers of national parliaments, expressed as a percentage of all occupied seats. It contributes to measuring progress on SDG target 5.5, to “Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.”
- metadata for SDG indicator 5.5.1(a)
SDG indicator 16.7.1(a) aims to measure how representative of the general population are the individuals occupying key decision-making positions in national legislatures. More specifically, this indicator measures the proportional representation of various demographic groups (women, age groups) in the national population amongst individuals occupying the following positions in national legislatures: (1) Members, (2) Speakers and (3) Chairs of permanent committees in charge of the following portfolios: Foreign Affairs, Defence, Finance, Human Rights and Gender Equality.
- metadata for SDG indicator 16.7.1(a)
In Parline, the data that informs SDG indicators 5.5.1(a) and 16.7.1(a) can be accessed in different ways:
- the monthly ranking by country and global and regional averages of women in parliament
- data on age of parliamentarians, by country and global and regional averages
- the sex and age breakdown of Speakers of parliament
- chairs of specialized bodies by sex and by age
- individual chamber pages
For more information about Parline and SDG indicators 5.5.1(a) and 16.7.1(a), please contact us.
See also the UN’s SDG Global Database.
History
The IPU has been publishing comparative data on parliaments since at least the 1960s. Initially this data was published in print format. The last print edition of Parliaments of the world: a comparative reference compendium was produced in 1986. An annual record of the results of all elections was published in the Chronicle of Parliamentary Elections between 1967 and 2010.
Since the 1990s, this data has published in the Parline database. The name “Parline” is derived from the words “PARliaments onLINE”. Over the years, the scope of the database has changed, while maintaining the core focus on reference data on the structure, composition and working methods of parliaments. The latest major revision of the fields included in the database took place in 2018. At this time, new fields were added to track data for SDG indicators 5.5.1(a) and 16.7.1(a) on parliamentarians in leadership positions by sex and by age.
IPU has a rich set of data on the number and percentage of women in parliament from 1945 to the current day. Since 1997, IPU has published a monthly ranking of the percentage of women in parliament. Since 2018, these rankings are now updated in Parline every month. Data on the age of parliamentarians was also incorporated into Parline at that time.
The technical architecture has also evolved over time, with the introduction of new features to view, export and reuse data from Parline. Historical time series were introduced to the database in the 2010s, and time series data is available for certain fields since 2013. Since the redevelopment of the technical platform for Parline in 2024, historical records are now kept for almost all fields, so changes over time can be tracked and reported. The 2024 redevelopment also advanced the concept of Parline data as ‘open data’, with the launch of a Parline API and the adoption of a Creative Commons license for the reuse of Parline data.
Parline continues to evolve, in close connection with Parline Correspondents in national parliaments and the Parline user community in parliaments, universities, international organizations and other institutions around the world. We always welcome feedback and suggestions – please do not hesitate to contact us.