This repository contains code to build cosponsorship networks from bills passed in the lower/national chamber of the Swiss Parliament.

• interactive demo
• static plots
• more countries

HOWTO

Replicate by running make.r in R.

The data.r script downloads information on bills and sponsors, using information from the website of the Swiss parliament and from its open data portal. All sponsor photos should download fine.

The build.r script then assembles the edge lists and plots the networks, with the help of a few routines coded into functions.r. Adjust the parameters in make.r to skip the plots or to change the node placement algorithm.

DATA

Bills

• chamber -- chamber of introduction (1: National or 2: States)
• legislature -- legislature
• id -- unique identifier
• date -- date of introduction (yyyy-mm-dd)
• title -- short title
• sponsors -- semicolon-separated URLs of single first author
• n_au -- total number of sponsors (first author + cosponsors)

Sponsors

• legislature -- legislature (imputed from date of entry)
• id -- unique identifier (points to profile URL)
• chamber -- chamber (1: National or 2: States)
• name -- full name
• sex -- gender
• born -- year of birth
• party -- political party
• constituency -- constituency (as a Wikipedia Francophone handle)
• nyears -- time in office since legislature 44, in years

Note: the code uses French party abbreviations and English party names. Three regional party branches are grouped with larger formations: the single sponsor for Alternative de Gauche in Geneva is grouped with the Parti Suisse du Travail, the Greens from Bern (Grünes Bündnis) and Zoug (Alternative Canton de Zoug) are grouped with the Swiss Federation of Green Parties, and the branches of the Christian Social Party in Obwalden and Wallis are grouped with their main party.