Manifesto Coding
Manifesto coding is the quantitative content-analysis methodology of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP/MARPOR) for measuring parties' policy preferences from their election manifestos. Trained coders break each manifesto into quasi-sentences and assign every unit to one of a fixed set of policy categories. Counting how often each category appears yields salience measures, and combining pro- and anti- categories produces position scores such as the left–right RILE index, giving comparable estimates of party positions across more than fifty democracies since 1945.
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Sources
- Budge, I., Klingemann, H.-D., Volkens, A., Bara, J., & Tanenbaum, E. (2001). Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments 1945–1998. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199244003
- Volkens, A., Bara, J., Budge, I., McDonald, M. D., & Klingemann, H.-D. (Eds.) (2013). Mapping Policy Preferences from Texts: Statistical Solutions for Manifesto Analysts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199640041
- Lowe, W., Benoit, K., Mikhaylov, S., & Laver, M. (2011). Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 36(1), 123–155. DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-9162.2010.00006.x ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Manifesto Coding (Comparative Manifesto Project Content Analysis). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/political-science/manifesto-coding
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