The Extent of Clientelism in Irish Politics: Evidence from Classifying Dáil Questions on a Local-National Dimension

Sarah Jane Delany

doi:10.21427/d7mg78

The Extent of Clientelism in Irish Politics: Evidence from Classifying Dáil Questions on a Local-National Dimension

Sarah Jane Delany

Faculty of Computing, Digital and Data

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

Abstract

The availability of the full text of Irish parliamentary questions oﬀers opportunities for using machine learning techniques to examine the currently much discussed role of elected representatives (TDs) in the Irish parliamentary system. Bluntly, are TDs mainly national legislators or “constituency messenger boys”? This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of automated text classiﬁcation techniques to categorise parliamentary questions from 1922 up to 2008 as national or local. The approach uses a bag of words representation, standard feature reduction methods and an SVM classiﬁer. Initial results show there is very little evidence in the corpus of parliamentary questions in Dail Eireann to support the view that the role of the TD is determined by mainly clientelist/parochial imperatives.

Original language	English
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.21427/d7mg78
Publication status	Published - 2010
Event	21st Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science - Galway, Ireland Duration: 30 Aug 2010 → 1 Sep 2010

Conference

Conference	21st Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
Country/Territory	Ireland
City	Galway
Period	30/08/10 → 1/09/10
Other	AICS 2010

Keywords

Irish parliamentary questions
machine learning techniques
elected representatives
TDs
national legislators
constituency messenger boys
automated text classification
parliamentary questions
Dail Eireann
clientelist
parochial imperatives

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10.21427/d7mg78Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Cite this

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title = "The Extent of Clientelism in Irish Politics: Evidence from Classifying D{\'a}il Questions on a Local-National Dimension",

abstract = "The availability of the full text of Irish parliamentary questions oﬀers opportunities for using machine learning techniques to examine the currently much discussed role of elected representatives (TDs) in the Irish parliamentary system. Bluntly, are TDs mainly national legislators or “constituency messenger boys”? This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of automated text classiﬁcation techniques to categorise parliamentary questions from 1922 up to 2008 as national or local. The approach uses a bag of words representation, standard feature reduction methods and an SVM classiﬁer. Initial results show there is very little evidence in the corpus of parliamentary questions in Dail Eireann to support the view that the role of the TD is determined by mainly clientelist/parochial imperatives.",

keywords = "Irish parliamentary questions, machine learning techniques, elected representatives, TDs, national legislators, constituency messenger boys, automated text classification, parliamentary questions, Dail Eireann, clientelist, parochial imperatives",

author = "Delany, {Sarah Jane}",

year = "2010",

doi = "10.21427/d7mg78",

language = "English",

note = "21st Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science ; Conference date: 30-08-2010 Through 01-09-2010",

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AB - The availability of the full text of Irish parliamentary questions oﬀers opportunities for using machine learning techniques to examine the currently much discussed role of elected representatives (TDs) in the Irish parliamentary system. Bluntly, are TDs mainly national legislators or “constituency messenger boys”? This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of automated text classiﬁcation techniques to categorise parliamentary questions from 1922 up to 2008 as national or local. The approach uses a bag of words representation, standard feature reduction methods and an SVM classiﬁer. Initial results show there is very little evidence in the corpus of parliamentary questions in Dail Eireann to support the view that the role of the TD is determined by mainly clientelist/parochial imperatives.

KW - Irish parliamentary questions

KW - machine learning techniques

KW - elected representatives

KW - TDs

KW - national legislators

KW - constituency messenger boys

KW - automated text classification

KW - parliamentary questions

KW - Dail Eireann

KW - clientelist

KW - parochial imperatives

U2 - 10.21427/d7mg78

DO - 10.21427/d7mg78

M3 - Paper

T2 - 21st Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science

Y2 - 30 August 2010 through 1 September 2010

ER -

The Extent of Clientelism in Irish Politics: Evidence from Classifying Dáil Questions on a Local-National Dimension

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Conference

Keywords

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