The Netherlands Local Manifesto Project. Infrastructure for studying local party politics

The Netherlands Local Manifesto Project (NLMP) collects manifestos of parties running in local elections in the Netherlands. It is not just the largest collection of party manifestos running in local elections in the world, but actually is the largest collection of party manifestos globally. This article introduces the NLMP: we briefly introduce the specificities of local government in the Netherlands. We then explain the structure of the data set and how it was collected. We illustrate its utility by looking at a simple example analysis that can be performed with it, examining the length of election manifestos in municipalities of different sizes. We conclude by sketching a broader research agenda.