Automatic thematic classification of the titles of the Seimas votes

Abstract

Statistical analysis of parliamentary roll call votes is an important topic in political science as it reveals ideological positions of members of parliament and factions. However, these positions depend on the issues debated and voted upon as well as on attitude towards the governing coalition. Therefore, analysis of carefully selected sets of roll call votes provides deeper knowledge about members of parliament behavior. However, in order to classify roll call votes according to their topic automatic text classifiers have to be employed, as these votes are counted in thousands. In this paper we present results of an ongoing research on thematic classification of roll call votes of the Lithuanian Parliament. Also, this paper is a part of a larger project aiming to develop the infrastructure designed for monitoring and analyzing roll call voting in the Lithuanian Parliament