Words on the floor: Thematic structure of political speeches
Abstract
This paper analyses the thematic structure of political control speeches in the Costa Rican Congress, where legislators request to take the floor to discuss topics related to their own policy interests or to those of their political groups. Using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model, this paper identifies dominant topics addressed in the 2018-2019 legislature, and spots differences between and within parties. While the ruling party pushed an agenda related to gender and the economy, the opposition devoted their attention to infrastructure, criticizing the government and talking about the coastal areas of the country. Moreover, I found differences in the way parties addressed polarizing topics.