| Description |
How do authoritarian constitutions (those drafted by autocrats) differ from democratic constitutions? Could the nature of authoritarian constitutions shape the dynamics of autocratic politics? These questions remain understudied, despite great interest more generally among scholars in the institutional bases of authoritarian rule. This thesis pushes this research agenda forward by developing a computational method for measuring institutional aspects of authoritarian constitutions via automated text analysis. Extant research using manual coding finds that authoritarian constitutions diverge from democratic constitutions in how they assign power to formal institutions, with broad powers given to the executive branch and the judiciary less independent (Elkins, Ginsburg, and Melton 2014). I perform similar tests with data generated through automated coding and reach similar conclusions, lending credence to the use of computational methods. |
