Establishing time-series databases of party manifestos and estimating party positions

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25780104
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Hino Airo 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 教授 (30457816)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 政党 / マニフェスト / コンピュータ・コーディング / 計量テキスト分析 / 政策位置

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aims to establish a historical database of party manifestos in Japan and to estimate their policy positions by applying various coding techniques. Party manifestos are valuable resources for the studies of political parties and in particular for empirically observing their policy positions. Yet, there have been only limited attempts to archive them in a systematic manner and to analyse them by applying various computer-assisted coding techniques developed in the recent years. This study attempts to fill this lacuna by collecting the past manifestos where possible and discussing how various coding techniques can help us understand the policy positions of political parties in Japan.

Free Research Field

政治学　選挙研究　比較政治