Evaluation

ideasim includes a validation framework for comparing simulation outputs against observed data from the ParlGov database.

ParlGov Integration

The evaluation module fetches party-level electoral data from ParlGov and maps parties to ideological families for comparison with simulated trajectories.

To run the evaluation (requires network access for initial data fetch):

python -m pytest tests/test_parlgov.py -v --run-slow

The data is cached locally in the data/ directory after the first fetch.

Data Fetching

ParlGov data is not bundled with the package. To fetch it manually:

from ideasim.evaluation.parlgov import fetch_parlgov_data

data = fetch_parlgov_data(cache_dir="data/parlgov")

The fetched data includes party positions, election results, and cabinet compositions across European democracies.