# The Long Register

> Every recorded political mandate in the 47 states of geographic Europe, from each
> state's foundation to the present: 813,039 rows, one per (person × position × term),
> covering 250,846 national office-holders and 350 dissolved predecessor states.
> Derived from Wikidata. Licence CC0-1.0 — reuse freely, no permission needed.
> Current version v1.0.0 (2026-09-01); rebuilt monthly.

Author: Gabriel Rossi (CEPS, Brussels) — gabriel.rossi@ceps.eu
Cite: Rossi, G. (2026). The Long Register: European political mandates since
state foundation (v1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22236882

## Data access (no key, no sign-up)

- Parquet, queryable in place over HTTP: https://huggingface.co/datasets/rossigab/the-long-register/resolve/main/mandates.parquet
- CSV (gzip): https://github.com/Milziade21/the-long-register/releases/download/v1.0.0/mandates.csv.gz
- Field-level schema: https://milziade21.github.io/the-long-register/schema.json
- DCAT-AP record: https://milziade21.github.io/the-long-register/dcat-ap.json
- All releases + checksums: https://github.com/Milziade21/the-long-register/releases

Example (DuckDB — answers "who governed Poland in 1935"):

    SELECT person_name, position, start_date, end_date
    FROM 'https://huggingface.co/datasets/rossigab/the-long-register/resolve/main/mandates.parquet'
    WHERE country = 'PL' AND level = 'national'
      AND start_year <= 1935 AND (end_year >= 1935 OR end_year IS NULL);

## Columns

- `statement_id` (string): Wikidata statement GUID; stable primary key for the mandate
- `person_qid` (string): Wikidata entity ID of the office-holder
- `person_name` (string): English label of the office-holder
- `position_qid` (string): Wikidata entity ID of the office
- `position` (string): English label of the office
- `country` (string): ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 of the primary present-day country
- `countries_all` (string): Semicolon-separated ISO codes incl. successor states of multinational polities
- `jurisdiction` (string): Historical or present-day state the office belonged to
- `level` (string): national | supranational | subnational
- `jurisdiction_link` (string): P1001 = office formally scoped to the jurisdiction (high precision); P17 = only country-of-origin known
- `start_date` (string): Term start, ISO 8601 date, null if unknown
- `end_date` (string): Term end, ISO 8601 date, null if in office or unknown
- `start_year` (integer): Signed year of start; negative = BCE. Use this for filtering
- `end_year` (integer): Signed year of end
- `parliamentary_group` (string): Parliamentary group / caucus for this mandate
- `electoral_district` (string): Constituency for this mandate
- `parliamentary_term` (string): Legislative term this mandate belongs to
- `replaces_qid` (string): Wikidata ID of predecessor in the office
- `replaced_by_qid` (string): Wikidata ID of successor in the office
- `party_labels` (string): Pipe-separated parties of the person (person-level, not term-level)
- `party_qids` (string): Pipe-separated Wikidata IDs of those parties
- `sex` (string): Sex or gender as recorded in Wikidata
- `birth_date` (string): Date of birth
- `death_date` (string): Date of death
- `birth_year` (integer): Signed year of birth
- `source` (string): Upstream source; 'wikidata' for all rows in v1
- `source_url` (string): Resolvable URL for the person entity
- `fetched_at` (string): Date the record was retrieved
- `processing_version` (string): Version of this pipeline that produced the row

## Caveats an agent must respect

- Coverage is Wikidata's coverage: absence of a row is NOT evidence an office was vacant.
- Filter `level IN ('national','supranational')` for the headline population.
- `party_labels` is person-level; use `parliamentary_group` for term-accurate affiliation.
- Multinational polities: primary successor in `country`, all successors in `countries_all`.
- Pre-1582 dates are proleptic; filter on signed `start_year`/`end_year` (negative = BCE).
- `jurisdiction_link = 'P1001'` marks the high-precision subset.
- Every row carries `source_url` (the Wikidata entity) — verify against it.
- Coverage inherits Wikidata's biases: women and pre-20th-century figures are
  under-represented; raw counts are not an unbiased sample of history.
- Freshness: rebuilt monthly from a Wikidata dump; recent office changes can lag
  by up to ~5-6 weeks. For "who is in office today", verify against the source_url.
- Rectification (living persons): gabriel.rossi@ceps.eu — see https://milziade21.github.io/the-long-register/about.html#governance

## Pages

- https://milziade21.github.io/the-long-register/ : overview, headline numbers, charts
- https://milziade21.github.io/the-long-register/datasets.html : downloads, schema, caveats, FAQ, corrections
- https://milziade21.github.io/the-long-register/about.html : author, acknowledgements, editorial standards