The Comparative Political Data Set 1960-2018 (CPDS) is a collection of political and institutional data which have been assembled in the context of the research projects “Die Handlungsspielräume des Nationalstaates” and “Critical junctures. An international comparison” directed by Klaus Armingeon and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This data set consists of (mostly) annual data for 36 democratic OECD and/or EU-member coun-tries for the period of 1960 to 2018. In all countries, political data were collected only for the democratic periods. The data set is suited for cross-national, longitudinal and pooled time-series analyses.