IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/336645.html

Comparative European legislative research in the age of large-scale computational text analysis: A review article

Author

Listed:
  • Sebők, Miklós
  • Proksch, Sven-Oliver
  • Rauh, Christian
  • Visnovitz, Péter
  • Balázs, Gergő
  • Schwalbach, Jan

Abstract

Advances in data accessibility and analytical methods opened new frontiers for comparative studies of European legislative activities. However, these advances still need to be fully harnessed by legislative scholars for multiple reasons. We provide an overview of extant research agendas to identify these reasons and explore the opportunities for tapping the potential of big data and quantitative text analysis. We present significant data collection efforts, such as ParlSpeech, the Comparative Agendas Project and CLARIN, and highlight their respective value for, primarily, large-N comparative research focusing on European Union member states and the European Union itself. Our review highlights the most consequential gaps in the literature and shortcomings of available data and analysis. These include the lack of extensive historical and geographical coverage, missing harmonisation and cross-linking between separate efforts, no unified speech and document (bill, law) databases, and the unavailability of good-quality full-text variables.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebők, Miklós & Proksch, Sven-Oliver & Rauh, Christian & Visnovitz, Péter & Balázs, Gergő & Schwalbach, Jan, 2025. "Comparative European legislative research in the age of large-scale computational text analysis: A review article," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 46(1), pages 18-39.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:336645
    DOI: 10.1177/01925121231199904
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/336645/1/Full-text-article-Sebok-et-al-Comparative-European-legislative.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/01925121231199904?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Proksch, Sven-Oliver & Wratil, Christopher & Wäckerle, Jens, 2019. "Testing the Validity of Automatic Speech Recognition for Political Text Analysis," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 339-359, July.
    2. Lucas, Christopher & Nielsen, Richard A. & Roberts, Margaret E. & Stewart, Brandon M. & Storer, Alex & Tingley, Dustin, 2015. "Computer-Assisted Text Analysis for Comparative Politics," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 254-277, April.
    3. John Wilkerson & David Smith & Nicholas Stramp, 2015. "Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(4), pages 943-956, October.
    4. Laver, Michael & Benoit, Kenneth & Garry, John, 2003. "Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 311-331, May.
    5. Lauderdale, Benjamin E. & Herzog, Alexander, 2016. "Measuring Political Positions from Legislative Speech," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 374-394, July.
    6. Döring, Holger & Regel, Sven, 2019. "Party Facts: A database of political parties worldwide," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 97-109.
    7. Kevin M. Quinn & Burt L. Monroe & Michael Colaresi & Michael H. Crespin & Dragomir R. Radev, 2010. "How to Analyze Political Attention with Minimal Assumptions and Costs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 209-228, January.
    8. Osnabrügge, Moritz & Hobolt, Sara B. & Rodon, Toni, 2021. "Playing to the Gallery: Emotive Rhetoric in Parliaments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(3), pages 885-899, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Greene, Zac & Ceron, Andrea & Schumacher, Gijs & Fazekas, Zoltan, 2016. "The Nuts and Bolts of Automated Text Analysis. Comparing Different Document Pre-Processing Techniques in Four Countries," OSF Preprints ghxj8, Center for Open Science.
    2. Merz, Nicolas & Regel, Sven & Lewandowski, Jirka, 2016. "The Manifesto Corpus: A new resource for research on political parties and quantitative text analysis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 3(2 (April-), pages 1-8.
    3. Dehler-Holland, Joris & Schumacher, Kira & Fichtner, Wolf, 2021. "Topic Modeling Uncovers Shifts in Media Framing of the German Renewable Energy Act," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 2(1).
    4. Mohamed M. Mostafa, 2023. "A one-hundred-year structural topic modeling analysis of the knowledge structure of international management research," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3905-3935, August.
    5. repec:osf:socarx:yfzsh_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Diaf, Sami & Döpke, Jörg & Fritsche, Ulrich & Rockenbach, Ida, 2022. "Sharks and minnows in a shoal of words: Measuring latent ideological positions based on text mining techniques," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Dehler-Holland, Joris & Okoh, Marvin & Keles, Dogan, 2022. "Assessing technology legitimacy with topic models and sentiment analysis – The case of wind power in Germany," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    8. Christopher Wratil & Sara B Hobolt, 2019. "Public deliberations in the Council of the European Union: Introducing and validating DICEU," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 511-531, September.
    9. Seraphine F. Maerz & Carsten Q. Schneider, 2020. "Comparing public communication in democracies and autocracies: automated text analyses of speeches by heads of government," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 517-545, April.
    10. repec:osf:osfxxx:ghxj8_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Mircea Popa, 2025. "Modelling policy action using natural language processing: evidence for a long-run increase in policy activism in the UK," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 1-51, May.
    12. Ash, Elliott & Gauthier, Germain & Widmer, Philine, 2024. "Relatio: Text Semantics Capture Political and Economic Narratives," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(1), pages 115-132, January.
    13. Born, Andreas & Janssen, Aljoscha, 2020. "Does a District-Vote Matter for the Behavior of Politicians? A Textual Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches," Working Paper Series 1320, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    14. Sanders James & Lisi Giulio & Schonhardt-Bailey Cheryl, 2017. "Themes and Topics in Parliamentary Oversight Hearings: A New Direction in Textual Data Analysis," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 153-194, December.
    15. Weifeng Zhong, 2016. "The candidates in their own words: A textual analysis of 2016 president primary debates," AEI Economic Perspectives, American Enterprise Institute, April.
    16. Karell, Daniel & Freedman, Michael Raphael, 2019. "Rhetorics of Radicalism," SocArXiv yfzsh, Center for Open Science.
    17. Oscar Calvo-Gonz'alez & Axel Eizmendi & Germ'an Reyes, 2022. "The Shifting Attention of Political Leaders: Evidence from Two Centuries of Presidential Speeches," Papers 2209.00540, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    18. Sara Kahn-Nisser, 2019. "When the targets are members and donors: Analyzing inter-governmental organizations’ human rights shaming," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 431-451, September.
    19. Tom Hunter & Stefanie Walter, 2026. "International organizations in national parliamentary debates," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 41-67, March.
    20. Hausladen, Carina I. & Schubert, Marcel H. & Ash, Elliott, 2020. "Text classification of ideological direction in judicial opinions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    21. Jaehwan LIM & Asei ITO & Hongyong ZHANG, 2023. "Policy Agenda and Trajectory of the Xi Jinping Administration: Textual Evidence from 2012 to 2022," Policy Discussion Papers 23008, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    22. Stefano Pagliari & Meredith Wilf, 2021. "Regulatory novelty after financial crises: Evidence from international banking and securities standards, 1975–2016," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(3), pages 933-951, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:336645. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.