Replication Data for: Government and Opposition in Legislative Speechmaking: Using Text-As-Data to Estimate Brazilian Political Parties Policy Positions

In this research note, we explore whether the government-opposition dimension that emerges from voting records of Brazilian legislatures also arises in legislative speechmaking. Since the earlier stages of the legislative process are innocuous to policy outcomes, party leaders would have fewer incentives to coerce the behavior of their co-partisans in speeches than in roll calls. To test whether this expectation holds, we estimated Brazilian political parties policy positions relying on a sentiment analysis approach to classify 64 thousand senators’ speeches. The results suggest that the president and the party leadership exert significant influence not only over how legislators vote but also over how they speak. We speculate that these unforeseen findings are backed by the decisiveness of speeches to pass legislation, the importance given by leadership to party brand, and the necessity of legislators to signal their positions to leaders and the government.