Publications

Google Scholar Page

Articles

2024. Benoit, Kenneth. “ AI and Data Science for Public Policy”. LSE Public Policy Review. 3(3): 1–6. 10.31389/lseppr.115

2022. Däubler, Thomas and Kenneth Benoit. “ Scaling hand-coded political texts to learn more about left-right policy content.” Party Politics. 28(5, September): 834–844. 10.1177/13540688211026076

2019. Benoit, Kenneth, Kevin Munger, and Arthur Spirling. “ Measuring and Explaining Political Sophistication Through Textual Complexity.” American Journal of Political Science 63(2, April): 491–508. 10.1111/ajps.12423. Replication materials here.

2018. Benoit, Kenneth, Kohei Watanabe, Haiyan Wang, Paul Nulty, Adam Obeng, Stefan Müller, and Akitaka Matsuo. “ quanteda: An R package for the quantitative analysis of textual data”. Journal of Open Source Software. 3(30), 774. 10.21105/joss.00774.

2018. Lincoln A. Mullen, Kenneth Benoit, Os Keyes, Dmitry Selivanov, and Jeffrey Arnold. “Fast, Consistent Tokenization of Natural Language Text.” Journal of Open Source Software, 3(23), 655. 10.21105/joss.00655.

2017. Julio Amador, Sofia Collignon-Delmar, Kenneth Benoit, and Akitaka Matsuo. “ Predicting the Brexit Vote by Tracking and Classifying Public Opinion Using Twitter Data”. Statistics, Politics and Policy 8(1): 85–104. doi: 10.1515/spp-2017-0006. 10.1515/spp-2017-0006

2017. Welbers, Kasper, Wouter van Atteveldt, and Kenneth Benoit. “ Text analysis in R.” Communications Methods and Measures. 11(4): 245-265. 10.1080/19312458.2017.1387238

2017. Daniel Schwarz, Denise Traber and Kenneth Benoit. “ Estimating Intra-Party Preferences: Comparing Speeches to Votes.” Political Science Research and Methods 5(2): 379-396. 10.1017/psrm.2015.77. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC- 2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2016. Paul Nulty, Yannis Theocharis, Sebastian Adrian Popa, Olivier Parnet, and Kenneth Benoit. “ Social Media and Political Communication in the 2014 Elections to the European Parliament”. Electoral Studies 44: 429-444. 10.1016/j.electstud.2016.04.014. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2016. Benoit, Kenneth, Drew Conway, Benjamin E. Lauderdale, Michael Laver, and Slava Mikhaylov. “ Crowd-Sourced Text Analysis: Reproducible and Agile Production of Political Data.” American Political Science Review 110 (2, May): 278-295. 10.1017/S0003055416000058 Replication materials available here. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2015. Herzog, Alexander and Kenneth Benoit. “ The Most Unkindest Cuts: Speaker Selection and Expressed Government Dissent During Economic Crisis”. Journal of Politics 77(4, October): 1157-1175. 10.1086/682670. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2015. Laver, Michael and Kenneth Benoit. “ The Basic Arithmetic of Legislative Decisions.” American Journal of Political Science 59(2, April): 275-291. 10.1111/ajps.12111 Presentation. On-line legislative type calculator.

2013. Lowe, Will and Kenneth Benoit. “ Validating Estimates of Latent Traits From Textual Data Using Human Judgment as a Benchmark.” Political Analysis 21: 298–313. 10.1093/pan/mpt002 Replication materials available from the Political Analysis dataverse. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2012. Däubler, Thomas, Kenneth Benoit, Slava Mikhaylov, and Michael Laver. “ Natural Sentences as Valid Units for Coded Political Texts.” British Journal of Political Science. 42(4): 937–951. 10.1017/S0007123412000105 Coding instructions for the unitization study. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2012. Benoit, Kenneth, Michael Laver, Will Lowe, and Slava Mikhaylov. “ How to scale coded text units without bias: A response to Gemenis.” Electoral Studies 31: 605–608. 10.1016/j.electstud.2012.05.004. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2012. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. “ The Dimensionality Of Political Space: Epistemological And Methodological Considerations.” European Union Politics 13(2): 194-218. 10.1177/1465116511434618

2012. McElroy, Gail and Kenneth Benoit. “ Policy Positioning in the European Parliament.” European Union Politics. 13(1): 150-167. Web-based appendix here.

2012. Mikhaylov, Slava, Michael Laver, and Kenneth Benoit. “ Coder Reliability and Misclassification in the Human Coding of Party Manifestos.” Political Analysis 20(1): 78–91. Replication materials including original data available here. This research was funded by the European Research Council grant ERC-2011-StG 283794-QUANTESS.

2011. William Lowe, Kenneth Benoit, Slava Mikhaylov, and Michael Laver. “ Scaling Policy Preferences From Coded Political Texts.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 26(1, Feb): 123-155. The replication dataset also containing more than 20 new scales (and confidence intervals) is available here.

2010. Gail McElroy and Kenneth Benoit. " Party Policy and Group Affiliation in the European Parliament." British Journal of Political Science 40(2, April): 377-398.

2010. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Marsh. “ Incumbent and Challenger Campaign Spending Effects in Proportional Electoral Systems: The Irish Elections of 2002.” Political Research Quarterly 63(1, March): 159-173. Replication materials here.

2009. Kenneth Benoit. “ Irish Political Parties and Policy Stances on European Integration.” Irish Political Studies 24(4, December): 447-466.

2009. Nina Wiesehomeier and Kenneth Benoit. “ Presidents, Parties And Policy Competition.” Journal of Politics 71(4, October): 1435-1447. Winner of the Gulbenkian Prize 2011( for the best paper published by a young social scientist [in all fields except economics] from a Portuguese institution in an international journal in the past two years). The web-based appendix and the dataset and replication materials are available from http://ninaw.webfactional.com/?page_id=11.

2009. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Marsh. “ A Relative Impact Ranking of Political Studies In Ireland.” Economic and Social Review 40(3): 269-298.

2009. Kenneth Benoit, Thomas Bräuninger, and Marc Debus. “ Challenges for estimating policy preferences: Announcing an open access archive of political documents.” German Politics 18(3, September): 440-453.

2009. Kenneth Benoit, Slava Mikhaylov, and Michael Laver. “ Treating Words as Data with Error: Uncertainty in Text Statements of Policy Positions.” American Journal of Political Science 53(2, April): 495-513. Replication materials and the error dataset can be found here.

2008. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Marsh. “ The Campaign Value of Incumbency: A New Solution to the Puzzle of Less Effective Incumbent Spending.” American Journal of Political Science 52(4, October): 874-890. Replication materials here .

2008. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver. “ Compared to What? A Comment on ‘A Robust Transformation Procedure for Interpreting Political Text’ by Martin and Vanberg.” Political Analysis 16(1, Winter): 101-111.

2007. Laver, Michael and Kenneth Benoit. “ Le changement des systèmes partisans et la transformation des espaces politiques.” Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée 14(2): 303-324. Original English version, “Party system change: evidence of changing policy spaces”, presented at IPSA 2006.

2007. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Electoral Laws as Political Consequences: Explaining the Origins and Change of Electoral Institutions.” Annual Review of Political Science 10: 363-90.

2007. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. “ Benchmarks for Text Analysis: A Reply to Budge and Pennings.” Electoral Studies 26: 130-135.

2007. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. “ Estimating party policy positions: Comparing expert surveys and hand coded content analysis.” Electoral Studies 26: 90-107.

2007. McElroy, Gail and Kenneth Benoit. “ Party Groups and Policy Positions in the European Parliament.” Party Politics 13(1): 5-28.

2006. Laver, Michael, Kenneth Benoit, and Nicolas Sauger. “ Policy Competition in the 2002 French Legislative and Presidential Elections.” European Journal of Political Research 45(4, June): 667-697.

2006. Benoit, Kenneth, Daniela Giannetti, and Michael Laver. “ Voter Strategies with Restricted Choice Menus.” British Journal of Political Science 36 (3, July): 459-485.

2006. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Duverger’s Law and the Study of Electoral Systems.” French Politics 4(1): 69-83.

2005. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. “ Mapping the Irish Policy Space: Voter and Party Spaces in Preferential Elections.” Economic and Social Review 36(2, Summer/Autumn): 83-108. Replication materials here.

2005. Laver, Michael and Kenneth Benoit. “ Estimating Party Policy Positions: Japan in Comparative Context.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 6(2, August): 187-209.

2005. Benoit, Kenneth, Michael Laver, Christine Arnold, Madeleine O. Hosli, and Paul Pennings. “ Measuring National Delegate Positions at the Convention on the Future of Europe Using Computerized Wordscoring.” European Union Politics 6(3, September): 291-313.

2004. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Models of Electoral System Change.” Electoral Studies 23: 363-389.

2004. Benoit, Kenneth and Jacqueline Hayden. “ Institutional Change and Persistence: The Evolution of Poland’s Electoral System 1989-2001.” Journal of Politics 66(May, 2): 396-427.

2003. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Marsh. “ Campaign Spending in the Local Government Elections of 1999.” Irish Political Studies 18(2, Winter): 1-22.

2003. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. “ Estimating Irish Party Positions Using Computer Wordscoring: The 2002 Elections.” Irish Political Studies 18(1): 97-107.

2003. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Marsh. “ For A Few Euros More: Campaign Spending Effects in the Irish Local Elections of 1999.” Party Politics 9(5): 561-582. Replication materials here.

2003. Laver, Michael, Kenneth Benoit, and John Garry. “ Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data.” American Political Science Review 97(2, May): 311-331.

2003. Laver, Michael and Kenneth Benoit. “ The Evolution of Party Systems Between Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 47(2, April): 215-233.

2003. Gascon, Generoso G. et. al. (as a coauthor). “ Randomized Treatment Study of Inosiplex Versus Combined Inosiplex and Intraventricular Interferon-α.” Journal of Child Neurolology 18: 819-827.

2002. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Like Déja Vu All Over Again: The Hungarian Elections of 2002.” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18(4, Dec): 119-133.

2002. Laver, Michael and Kenneth Benoit. “ Locating TDs in Policy Spaces: Wordscoring Dáil Speeches.” Irish Political Studies 17(1, Summer): 59-73.

2002. Benoit, Kenneth. “ The Endogeneity Problem in Electoral Studies: A Critical Reexamination of Duverger’s Mechanical Effect.” Electoral Studies 21(1, March): 35-46.

2001. Benoit, Kenneth. “ District Magnitude, Electoral Formula, and the Number of Parties.” European Journal of Political Research 39(2, March): 203-224. Local Hungarian election dataset and replication code.

2001. Benoit, Kenneth and John W. Schiemann. “ Institutional Choice in New Democracies: Bargaining Over Hungary’s 1989 Electoral Law.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 13(2, April): 159-188.

2000. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Which Electoral Formula is the Most Proportional? A New Look with New Evidence.” Political Analysis 8(4): 381-388. [Replication dataset available upon request.]

1996-97. Benoit, Kenneth and Gary King. “ A Preview of EI and EzI: Programs for Ecological Inference.” Social Science Computer Review 14(4):433-438.

1996. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Hungary’s Two-Vote Electoral System.” Representation 33(4): 162-170.

1996. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Democracies Really Are More Pacific (In General): Reexamining Regime Type and War Involvement.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40(4): 636-657. Replication dataset.

Books

2008. Giannetti, Daniela and Kenneth Benoit, eds. Intra-Party Politics and Coalition Governments. London: Routledge.

2006. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.

Software and Datasets

2012-present. quanteda: quantitative analysis of textual data (R package). Available from http://github.com/kbenoit/quanteda.

2004-2005. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. Expert survey scores of policy positions of political parties in 47 countries. Accompanies book of same title. Available from http://www.politics.tcd.ie/ppmd/.

Benoit, Kenneth. Wordscores: Software for Coding Political Texts. Requires Stata. Available from http://wordscores.com.

1996-2002. Benoit, Kenneth and Gary King. “ EzI: A(n Easy) Program for Ecological Inference.” Computer software for MS-DOS, OS/2, and Windows 95. Development language: Gauss. Winner of the 1998 APSA Best Research Software Award.

1999. Gary King, Bradley Palmquist, Greg Adams, Micah Altman, Kenneth Benoit, Claudine Gay, Jeffrey B. Lewis, R. Mayer, and Eric Reinhardt). Record of American Democracy, 1984-1990. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research Number 2162. Winner of the 1999 APSA Best Research Web Site Award.

Book Chapters

2020. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Text as Data: An Overview.” In Curini, Luigi and Robert Franzese, eds. Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations. Thousand Oaks: Sage. pp461-497.

2019. Benoit, Kenneth, Kevin Munger, and Arthur Spirling. “Dumbing Down? Trends in the Complexity of Political Communication.” In Frances Lee and Nolan McCarty eds., Can America Govern Itself?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp220-236.

2017. Benoit, Kenneth and Alexander Herzog. “Text Analysis: Estimating Policy Preferences From Written and Spoken Words.” In Jennifer Bachner, Kathyrn Wagner Hill, and Benjamin Ginsberg, eds., Analytics, Policy and Governance. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 137–159.

2011. Enyedi, Zsolt and Kenneth Benoit. “Critical Election 2010. The Realignment of the Hungarian Party System in the Left-Right Dimension.” [In Hungarian] In The New Formula: Elections in Hungary in 2010, eds. Zsolt Enyedi, Robert Tardos and Andrea Szabo. Budapest: DKMKA. pp17-42.

2009. McElroy, Gail and Kenneth Benoit. “Party Group Switching in the European Parliament.” In Legislative Party Switching and the Foundations of Political Parties, eds. William Heller and Carol Mershon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp147-172.

2008. Giannetti, Daniela and Kenneth Benoit. “Intraparty politics and coalition governments in parliamentary democracies.” In Intra-Party Politics and Coalition Governments in Parliamentary Democracies, eds. Daniela Giannetti and Kenneth Benoit. London: Routledge. pp3-24.

2008. Benoit, Kenneth and Daniela Giannetti. “Intraparty politics and coalition governance: concluding remarks.” In Intra-Party Politics and Coalition Governments in Parliamentary Democracies, eds. Daniela Giannetti and Kenneth Benoit. London: Routledge. pp229-235.

2008. Benoit, Kenneth and Nina Wiesehomeier. “ Expert Judgments.” In Neuere Entwicklungen und Anwendungen auf dem Gebiet der Methoden der vergleichenden Politik- und Sozialwissenschaft, eds. Susanne Pickel, Gert Pickel, Hans-Joachim Lauth, and Detlef Jahn. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. pp497-515.

2006. Gwiazda, Anna and Kenneth Benoit. “Hungary: Protection of Ethnic Minorities and Institutional Balance.” In Policy-making Processes and the European Constitution: A comparative study of member states and accession countries, eds. Thomas Konig and Simon Hug. London: Routledge. pp119-127.

2005. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Hungary: Holding Back the Tiers.” In The Politics of Electoral Systems, eds. Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 231-252.

2004. Benoit, Kenneth, Michael Laver and Daniela Giannetti. “ Multi-Party Split-Ticket Voting Estimation as an Ecological Inference Problem..” In Gary King, Ori Rosen, and Martin Tanner, Ecological Inference: New Methodological Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2001. Benoit, Kenneth. “Evaluating Hungary’s Mixed-Member Electoral System.” In Matthew Shugart and Martin Wattenberg, eds. Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1999. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Votes and Seats: The Hungarian Electoral Law and the 1994 Parliamentary Elections.” In Founding Elections in Eastern Europe: Elections to the 1994 Hungarian National Assembly, eds. Gábor Tóka and Zsolt Enyedi. Berlin: Sigma.

1998. Benoit, Kenneth. “Forecasting the Outcome of the 1998 Parliamentary Elections.” InSándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor, and László Vass, eds., Hungarian Political Yearbook 1997 [in Hungarian]. Budapest: Demokrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Alapítvány.

1995. Benoit, Kenneth and Kenneth Shepsle. “ Electoral Systems and Minority Representation.” In Paul Peterson ed., Classifying by Race. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Other

2021. Benoit, Kenneth. “ Textual Data Science with R.” The American Statistician 75(4): 453-454. doi: 10.1080/00031305.2021.1985864.

2006. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. “Automated Content Analysis of Political Texts using Wordscores.” APSA-CP Newsletter 17(1, Winter):6-9.

2005. “ How Qualitative Research Really Counts.” Qualitative Methods Newsletter (Spring).

2002. “Hungary.” In Sara Pendergast and Thomas Pendergast, eds. Worldmark Encyclopedia of National Economies. 4 vols. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group.

2001. “ Simulation Methodologies for Political Scientists.” The Political Methodologist 10(1, Fall): 12-16.

2001. Review of Doing Research in Political Science: An Introduction to Comparative Methods and Statistics , by Paul Pennings, Hans Keman and Jan Kleinnijenhuis. Acta Politica: International Journal of Political Science 36 (Spring):107-109.

2001. “Authoritarianism”; “Military Dictatorship”; and “One-party State.” Entries for A Reader’s Guide to the Social Sciences. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Press.

1997. Benoit, Kenneth. “Forecasting the 1998 [Hungarian] Parliamentary Elections.” [In Hungarian] Századvég 5 (Summer): 149-166.

1997. “ Why I Use Linux.” The Political Methodologist 8(1, Fall): 29-33.

Working Papers

2007. McElroy, Gail and Kenneth Benoit. “A Policy Model of Party Group Formation in the European Parliament.” 21st Century COE program ‘Invention of Policy Systems in Advanced Countries’ Occasional Paper. University of Tokyo.

2006. McElroy, Gail and Kenneth Benoit. “ Party Groups and Policy Positions in the European Parliament.” Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper No. 102.

2004. Chari, Raj, Alfonso Egea de Horo, Kenneth Benoit, and Michael Laver. “ Spain and European Union Constitution-Building.” Working paper 2004/17, Real Instituto Elcano de Estudios Internationales y Estratégicos (Madrid, July 18).

1997. Schiemann, John W. and Kenneth Benoit. “ Bargaining and Institutional Choice: The Origins of Hungary’s 1989 Electoral Law.” Center for International Affairs Working Paper No. 97-5. Harvard University.

1994. “Re-examining Regime Type and War Involvement.” Center for International Affairs Working Paper No. 94-5. Harvard University.

Conference Papers and Unpublished Papers

2017. Perry, Patrick and Kenneth Benoit. “ Scaling Text with the Class Affinity Model.” London School of Economics and New York University manuscript.

2007 (with Michael Laver and Slava Mikhaylov). “Mapping Policy Preferences with Uncertainty: Measuring and Correcting Error in Comparative Manifesto Project Estimates.” Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, 30 August-2 September.

2005 (with Alex Baturo). “National Party Competition and Support for European Integration.” Presented at the ECPR General Conference, 8-10 September 2005, Budapest, Hungary.

2005 (with Michael Laver). “The Integer Arithmetic of Legislative Dynamics.” Paper presented at the Workshop on Party Switching, July 10-14, 2005, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

2002 (with Michael Laver). “ Extracting Policy Positions From Political Texts Using Phrases as Data: A Research Note.” Paper presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton and Towers, Chicago, IL, 3-6 April.

2001. “ Two Step Forward, One Steps Back: Electoral Coordination in the Hungarian Elections of 1998.” Trinity College manuscript.