Measuring institutional variation across American Indian constitutions using automated content analysis
| Author | Laura Saavedra-Lux,Florian G Kern,Rebecca Cordell,Kristian Skrede Gleditsch |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343320959122 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Article |
Measuring institutional variation across
American Indian constitutions using
automated content analysis
Rebecca Cordell
University of Texas at Dallas
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
University of Essex
Florian G Kern
University of Essex
Laura Saavedra-Lux
University of Essex
Abstract
Effectively measuring variation in institutions over time and across jurisdictions is important for examining how
institutional characteristics shape political, social, and economic issues. We present a new dataset of American Indian
and Alaska Native (AIAN) constitutions and a new approach for measuring variation in polities using machine
learning techniques. Existing data on AIAN institutions have largely been based on costly and time-consuming
expert coding and survey approaches, where the end product will become obsolete once institutions change. Our
automated content analysis of AIAN constitutional documents allows for more flexible and customizable measure-
ment of the variation, using a larger corpus of data than existing approaches, limited by data collection and coding
costs. We consider variation in judicial institutions, previously shown to play a crucial role in AIAN development,
and compare our machine coded measures to existing hand coded data for a sample of 97 American Indian
constitutions. We show that machine coding replicates expert coded data. Our approach can be easily extended
to other topics, including the executive, and shows the potential of automated measures to complement or confirm
traditional coding of political institutions.
Keywords
American Indian and Alaska Native nations, constitutions, content analysis, institutions
Introduction
Effectively measuring variation in institutions over time
and across jurisdictions is important to scholars who
study how institutional characteristics shape political,
social, and economic issues including development, the
rule of law, and change in political institutions. We pres-
ent a new dataset of American Indian nations’ constitu-
tions and polities to contribute to the discussion on
measuring institutions. Political scientists have long
neglected the study of American Indian and Alaska
Native (AIAN) nations (Ferguson, 2016), even though
the pressures these communities face reflect important
issues including poverty and inequality. US 2014 census
Corresponding author:
Rebecca.Cordell@utdallas.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(6) 777–788
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343320959122
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