The Shifting Attention of Political Leaders: Evidence from Two Centuries of Presidential Speeches

Oscar Calvo-Gonz\'alez, Axel Eizmendi and Germ\'an Reyes

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We use natural-language-processing algorithms on a novel dataset of over 900 presidential speeches from ten Latin American countries spanning two centuries to study the dynamics and determinants of presidential policy priorities. We show that most speech content can be characterized by a compact set of policy issues whose relative composition exhibited slow yet substantial shifts over 1819-2022. Presidential attention initially centered on military interventions and the development of state capacity. Attention gradually evolved towards building physical capital through investments in infrastructure and public services and finally turned towards building human capital through investments in education, health, and social safety nets. We characterize the way in which president-level characteristics, like age and gender, predict the main policy issues. Our findings offer novel insights into the dynamics of presidential attention and the factors that shape it, expanding our understanding of political agenda-setting.

Date: 2022-09, Revised 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp, nep-his and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.00540 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2209.00540

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().