COM-COM TECHNOLOGY AND INTEGRATION OF THE EUROPEAN POLITICAL DATABASE

During the 1980s, the New Information Technologies (NITs) have made su bstantial progress affecting empirical political scientists and data a rchivists alike. This progress concerns: PC-programs that can handle l arge amounts of statistical data, more efficient personal computers, i nternational research networks operating on standardized file transfer protocols, and enhanced possibilities for communicating both data and research results across borders through remote control and e-mail. Th ese possibilities for integrating data and research results between di fferent countries imply both opportunities and problems for researcher s and data archivists. With the increase of data exchange, we are like ly to face difficulties with surveillance and overview. Also, there is a danger of hypertrophy, a pace of development where we can no longer keep up with innovations. That may result in apraxia - an inability t o co-ordinate the information necessary to produce good comparative re search. Data overload can in principle be handled technically with dev ices that provide guidelines to the content of other database structur es and file content overviews. Security issues, copyright of the princ ipal investigators and the practical administration of data from diffe rent archives and databases require a standard formula for distributio n. Also, there has to be expertise at data archives to provide infrast ructural services, but the issue of commercialization of academic data services is too complex to allow for easy marketing solutions.