The data set used in this study contains information for all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa on 99 variables. It is divided into two parts. The first contains information (63 variables) on the characteristics of political regimes and institutions from independence to December 31, 1989. The second part (36 variables) refers to the dynamics of regime transitions for the five-year period from 1990 to 1994.

In order to characterize the old regimes, we drew primarily on established sources. Economic indicators were drawn largely from the World Bank's World Development Report (1991), which reported on the state of African economies in 1989. Social indicators – on characteristics like ethnic or religious fragmentation – were drawn together from a more disparate range of standard compendia. Our principal aim was to add value to the existing stock of knowledge about the political characteristics of authoritarian regimes in Africa. For this reason, we compiled a listing of every national election in Africa from 1960 to 1989, for totals of 106 presidential and 185 parliamentary contests. We assembled indicators on the numbers of political parties, associational groups, and media outlets in 1975 and 1989. And we classified countries by type of political regime, noting the duration of each regime in years, and the number and mode of previous regime transitions for all 47 countries up to 1989.

For the second part of the data set, we generated new data to describe the contemporary round of regime transitions.