Do a quick article search here:

The above search box is searching the following specific databases, that you might want to try individually:

Academic Search Premier

• Good for its mix of popular, news, and scholarly articles. You have to exercise your critical evaluation skills to determine if an article is truly scholarly or not. (Do NOT rely solely on their limit to peer-reviewed feature--it is not reliable. Checking a journal on Ulrich's through FindText is better, although you still have to use your own judgment.)

Web of Science

• Interdisciplinary database that includes all the social sciences. Special feature is the ability to find articles that cite an article or author.
   

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

• The best database for retrieving articles  from scholarly journals (and other sources) only in political science and related fields such as international relations, law, and public administration / policy. Again, do not completely rely on their limit to "scholarly journals" feature.

See also:

Google Scholar

• Google for academics.

LexisNexis Academic

• A rich source of U.S. and international news articles, all full text. You will find some articles from major world newspapers through "Easy Search", but better results can be obtained through Power Search--requiring more sophisticated search techniques, with which Victoria can help you.

World News Connection is another international news source you can try. A large array of translated and English-language non-U.S. media sources.

This worksheet will help you develop keyword searches that get results. 

Find a book

in UOWorldCat (UO Libraries and beyond)

A few book search tips:

• Use more general terms, as opposed to the more specific terms used for searching for articles. E.g., if you want books about elections in Costa Rica, you may want to look for books just on Costa Rica and government and/or politics. Most likely these will include something on elections.
   
• UO WorldCat searches for articles, and many other formats besides books. To limit to books, click on 'book' under format on the left side.
   
• You may get more or better results if you do a Subject Heading search for a broad term. To do a search by Subject, go to Advanced Search and pull down the menu to Subject. You also can click on the subject heading links at the right side of the full record display for a book that you like, to get more like it. For instance, in the above search I found the subject heading "Costa Rica -- Politics and Government" -- which found me more relevant books. Here are some potentially useful subject headings:
  • [Name of country] - History
  • [Name of country] - Politics and Government
  • [Name of country] - Social conditions
  • Authoritarianism - [Name of country]
  • Democracy - [Name of country]
  • Democratization - [Name of country]
  • Nationalism - [Name of country]
  • Political parties - [Name of country]
  • Post-communism - [Name of country]
  • Socialism - [Name of country]
  
  

Government & IGO Sources

Countries and their domain extensions
Use these extensions to restrict a Google (or other search engine) search to sources from a particular country, including government websites.  Use, e.g, Google Advanced search.

EuroStat 
Detailed economic and demographic statistics on EU and EU candidate countries.

Foreign Government websites
This excellent list of links is maintained by Northwestern University Library.

OECD i-Library
OECD iLibrary provides access to databases, periodicals, books and papers of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

State Department (U.S.) - A-Z List of Country and Other Area Pages 
Be sure to check out the Background Notes, and, if available, the Library of Congress Country Study.

UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
The site has online reports and statistics (see UNCTADStat), dealing with, as you would expect, issues related to trade, industry, labor, etc. 

UNdata
Internet based data service from the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). Statistics on all manner of things, from all countries.

USA.gov
The US government's portal to web information. You can search across agency web pages.

US Census (American FactFinder) 
Use Quick Start, or, choose a Topic or Population Group and then a Geography. This can be confusing to use, so don't hesitate to contact Victoria for help.

World Bank (country profiles)
Mainly for developing nations, which will have a country "overview" and/or "country brief" and often other reports as well.

World dataBank
Two combined databases from the World Bank: World Development Indicators and Global Development Finance providing financial and development data for countries.

World Factbook (CIA) 
The CIA World Factbook "provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities."

Reference Sources and Guides

= You must be on campus, or an authorized UO user if off campus, to access)

Country Profiles Research Guide

Europa WorldPlus
Europa WorldPlus provides historical background, geographic, political and economic information for more than 250 countries and territories.

International Studies Research Guide

Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World ; also in KNIGHT REFERENCE JA61 .O95 2001
A comprehensive guide to international relations and domestic politics throughout the world, with articles on major concepts and themes in modern politics. Most articles run one page or less, but approximately 30 longer feature articles ("Critical Issues" and "Interpretive Essays") cover selected topics in more depth.

 Political Parties of the World 6th ed., 2005
Arranged by country, this "covers details of all currently active parties of any consequence in every country in the world and offers concise overviews of national parliamentary and constitutional arrangements."

Political Science Research Guide

Revolutionary & Dissident Movements of the World
Arranged by country, this is a good source to find out about opposition and dissident parties and movements in your country. 

Worldmark Encylopedia of the Nations 11th ed., 2004
Detailed country profiles that include geographic, social, political and economic information.