Mapping Policy Preferences from Texts: Statistical Solutions for Manifesto Analysts

The Manifesto data are the only comprehensive set of policy indicators for social, economic and political research. It is thus vital that their quality is established. The purpose of this book is to review methodological issues that have got in the way of straightforwardly using the Manifesto data since our two preceding volumes were published and to resolve them in ways which best serve users and textual analysts in general. The book is thus generally about text-based quantitative analysis with a particular focus on the quality of the CMP-MARPOR data and ways of assessing and using them,

In doing so the book goes beyond normal data documentation - essential though that is - to confront the analytic issues faced by users of the data now distributed by MARPOR. It also provides concrete strategies for tackling these at the research level, with examples from the field of political representation. The problems of uncertainty, error, reliability and validity considered here are generic issues for political analysts in any area of research, so the book has an interest extending beyond the Manifesto estimates themselves - in particular to other textual analyses.

In addition the book widens the range of applications introduced in our two previous volumes and discusses the extension of the manifesto project database to cover Latin America.

Andrea Volkens, Director of MARPOR, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin,Judith Bara, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Queen Mary University of London,Ian Budge, Research Professor in Government, University of Essex,Michael D. McDonald, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center on Democratic Performance, Binghamton University

The Manifesto Research Group (MRG) and its successors - the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) - is an international project which has been collecting and analysing manifestos and platforms from over fifty post-war democracies for over forty years. It is now housed at the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin, with a long-term grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Having concentrated previously on OECD, EU and CEE countries, it is now extending its collection to Latin America and beyond. For further information please go to https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu