LAVER & GARRY DICTIONARY OF POLICY POSITION – (FREE)

 

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DICTIONARY INFORMATION

Description – The Laver & Garry dictionary has been developed to estimates the policy positions of political actors in the United Kingdom by comparing their speeches and written documents to key words found in the British conservative and Labour manifestos of 1992. Words have been selected semantically based on how they were related to specific content categories as well as empirically based on how specific they were to a specific political party (a word should be used by one party at least twice as often as by the other party). The dictionary contains 415 words and word patterns stored in 19 categories.

 

Note: Please remember that this dictionary was customized to reflect the policy positions of UK political parties. It has limited utility to assess political documents from other countries. The procedure outline in Laver & Gary (2000) could however be used to adapt the dictionary to a different political context.

 

Main reference: (to be cited in all publications which make use of it)

  • Laver. M. & Garry, J. (2000). Estimating Policy Positions from Political Texts. American Journal of Political Science, 44 (3), 619-634.

 

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LAVER & GARRY DICTIONARY
CATEGORIES AND SAMPLE WORDS
CATEGORY SAMPLE WORDS OR WORD PATTERNS
ECONOMY
More State assist, benefit, care, disabilities, educat*, invest, pension
Equal State accounting, bank*, bargaining, customer*, econ*, import
Less State autonomy, bidders, choice*, controls, franchise*, market
INSTITUTION
Radical abolition, accountable, monitor*, reform*, scrap, voice*
Neutral assembly, council*, commission*, office, parliament*
Conservative authority, inspect*, jurisdiction*, legitimate, strike*
VALUES
Liberal cruel*, discriminat*, human, injustice*, rights, sex*
Conservative defend, discipline, glorious, honour, immigra*, marriage
LAW AND ORDER
Liberal harassment, non-custodial
Conservative assaults, burglar*, court, disorder, drug*, hooligan*, police
ENVIRONMENT
Pro-environment car, chemical*, ecolog*, emission*, green, planet
Con-environment product*
CULTURE
High art, artistic, dance, galler*, museum, music*, opera
Popular media
Sport angler*
GROUPS
Women girls, woman, women
Ethnic asian*, buddhist*, ethnic*, race, raci*
Rural agricultur*, bird*, faram*, fish*, forest*, livestock,, wildlife
Urban town*