Voter representation project and Shiny app

This repo contains data and code for the Bruegel publication 'Is Brexit an Opportunity to Reform the European Parliament' and is the basis for the accompanying Shiny app.

Code

The code for the project is split in

• code that is used for the Shiny app: ui.R and server.R,
• functions to calculate allocations of MEPs and measures of inequality in the 'funk' folder and
• code that is used for exploratory analysis and the optimisation exercise in 'vrep.py' and 'optimisation.R' respectively.

Data

The data folder includes three CSVs:

• eu.csv contains information on population at the end of 2016, number of MEPs and a few derived variables. It serves as the main input to the Shiny app.
• eu_brexit.csv is the result of an exploratory analysis performed in 'vrep.py' including a number of scenarios.
• meps.csv is a list of all MEPs in the EP and their country and political group affiliation.

Next steps

Following the publication of the policy contribution and Shiny app, code and data will be bundled in an R package.

A number of improvements to the Shiny app are planned including object constancy.