Ian Budge (born October 21, 1936) is a political scientist who has pioneered the use of quantitative methods in studying party democracy across countries.
After teaching at Edinburgh (1962-4) and Strathclyde Universities (1963-66) he moved to Essex, rising from Lecturer to Reader and Professor (1976).
He founded the Essex Summer Schools in Social Science Data Analysis (1968–73) and was Director of the European Consortium for Political Research (1979–83), besides being Chairman of the Essex Department and Graduate Director several times[4] Budge was founding Director of the Manifesto Research Project (now MARPOR at the Wissenschaftzentrum, Berlin) which has quantified the published election programmes of all significant political parties in around 50 post-war democracies, allowing their policies to be mapped and systematically related to party actions in government.
These achievements have been recognised in essays by leading scholars in a volume reviewing his work (Democratic Politics and Party Competition, ed.
Judith Bara and Albert Weale, London Routledge 2006) as well as by a number of research awards over his career.