Panel data on the impact of democracy and political stability on economic growth in the MENA region over the years 1983–2022

This panel dataset contains information collected from five distinct sources on the impact of democracy and political stability on economic growth in 15 emerging countries in the MENA region from 1983 to 2022. The dataset includes information about GDP per capita, inflation, trade, population growth, government expenditure, participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, egalitarian democracy, institutionalized autocracy, and political stability. Data analysis was carried out utilizing R statistical software to ensure the accuracy of the data by imputing missing data using the monotone REG approach, allowing future researchers to investigate the linkage between political factors and growth in various scenarios. Data are provided in two sheets, one containing the data before the missing value imputation and another after the monotone REG imputation. This dataset is a companion for an unpublished thesis titled “Democracy, Political Stability, and Economic Growth.”


a b s t r a c t
This panel dataset contains information collected from five distinct sources on the impact of democracy and political stability on economic growth in 15 emerging countries in the MENA region from 1983 to 2022. The dataset includes information about GDP per capita, inflation, trade, population growth, government expenditure, participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, egalitarian democracy, institutionalized autocracy, and political stability. Data analysis was carried out utilizing R statistical software to ensure the accuracy of the data by imputing missing data using the monotone REG approach, allowing future researchers to investigate the linkage between political factors and growth in various scenarios. Data are provided in two sheets, one containing the data before the missing value imputation and another after the monotone REG imputation. This dataset is a companion for an unpublished thesis titled "Democracy, Political Stability, and Economic Growth.

Value of the Data
• These data are helpful mainly for understanding the impact of political factors, particularly democracy and political stability, on economic growth. • Researchers and policymakers can benefit from these data.
• The data can be used to validate and extend existing theories on the impact of political factors on GDP per capita growth, potentially leading to the development of effective economic policies and, hence, long-term development. • The data can be reanalyzed using different analytical methods or combined with other datasets to explore new research questions and hypotheses. • Future experiments can be designed based on these data to explore the causal nexus between democracy-economic growth.

Objective
The primary objective behind generating this dataset is to explore the impact of the participatory democracy index, egalitarian democracy index, deliberative democracy index, political stability index, and institutionalized autocracy on GDP per capita in 15 MENA countries between 1983 to 2022. This data article adds value to the scientific community by offering a rich and comprehensive dataset to analyze further and use to validate existing theories or develop new hypotheses regarding the linkage between political factors and economic growth. The dataset can also serve as a foundation for future research, enabling the design of experiments to investigate causal relationships or the impact of democracy and economic growth.

Data Description
The dataset incorporates ten variables: GDP per capita, trade, inflation, population growth, government final consumption expenditure, deliberative democracy index, participatory democracy index, egalitarian democracy index, political stability, and institutionalized autocracy index. The economic variables suggested by [1] were obtained from the World Bank Development Indicators (WDI) and the Penn World Table (PWT). For political stability, data were collected from the World Bank Government Indicators (WGI) following [2] . The main variable in our analysis is democracy, as previous literature shows conflicting views on the effect of democracy on growth. Therefore, information for democracy was collected from V-Dem, the most relevant metric for democracy, as stated in [3] -Finally, Institutionalized autocracy was assembled from Polity5. The explanations and sources of the variables are provided in Table 1 .

Experimental Design, Materials and Methods
Data collection for this study was conducted from various sources. The study sample represents 15 MENA countries over 39 years, mainly from 1983 to 2022, with 600 observations. Since the existence of missing data in political-economic datasets might challenge the empirical analysis of quantitative research, resulting in incorrect parameter estimations, information loss, higher standard errors, and decreased generalizability [4] , a diagnostic analysis was applied using R software to analyze the collected data and assess the suitability of variables for the research. Fig. 1 depicts the percentages of missing values, with 92.6% being present values and 7.4% being missing, demonstrating that imputation is essential to replace missing data and enable a rigorous study. Fig. 2 shows the missing data distribution pattern, which helps researchers determine the types of missing data and, as a result, the most appropriate imputation strategy. Missing data  is classified into monotone and non-monotone patterns, and each pattern includes suggested imputation procedures for both.
The collected data show a monotone trend; hence, the "mice" package using R software was adopted to impute missing data using a regression method called "monotone REG" through the following code (results of the monotone REG imputation are displayed in Fig. 3 ).  As a final step, outliers analysis was performed the political stability index (PST) (see Fig. 4 ), before running the empirical analysis due to its significant imputation values compared to the rest of the variables. The outliers analysis along other diagnostics should be performed for all imputed variables as we used only one data imputation from the fifth suggestions (m = 5). In this regard, researchers can use the original dataset (panel_democ_before_imp) to control for results, avoid misleading data, and hence ensure robust data for the empirical investigations.
To summarize, this data paper provides two XLS datasets. The first (panel_democ_before_ imp) is a panel data that give information before missing value imputation. The second dataset (panel_democ_after_imp) contains the data after adopting the "mice package" as a missing value imputation method.

Ethics Statements
The authors were carried out in conformity with the Declaration of Helsinki.The authors have read and follow the ethical requirements for publication in Data in Brief and confirming that the current work does not involve human subjects, animal experiments, or any data collected from social media platforms.

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.