The World of Ethnic Regional Autonomies: Introducing the New Dataset

The article introduces the Ethnic Regional Autonomies Dataset (ERAD), which describes the contemporary population of politically autonomous regions established on the basis of ethnicity. We conceptualize an ERA as a special case of accommodative policy related to decentralization/devolution of powers to relevant territorially concentrated ethnic groups. The data captures the major characteristics of ERAs across the world, including demographic, economy, and politics. We describe the process of compiling the comprehensive list of ethnoregional autonomies and discuss the issues of coding and mis-categorization. Finally, we present descriptive statistics and illustrative cases alongside exploratory analysis of the data. We conclude with the prospects for future developments.