The Shifting Attention of Political Leaders: Evidence from Two Centuries of Presidential Speeches

TL;DR

This study analyzes two centuries of Latin American presidential speeches using NLP to uncover how policy priorities shifted from military and state capacity issues to human capital investments, influenced by leader characteristics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of the evolution of presidential policy focus over 200 years, highlighting the impact of leader traits on agenda-setting.

Findings

Policy focus shifted from military to human capital over two centuries.

Leader characteristics like age and gender influence policy priorities.

Speech content can be summarized by a small set of key issues.

Abstract

We use natural-language-processing algorithms on a novel dataset of over 900 presidential speeches from ten Latin American countries spanning two centuries to study the dynamics and determinants of presidential policy priorities. We show that most speech content can be characterized by a compact set of policy issues whose relative composition exhibited slow yet substantial shifts over 1819-2022. Presidential attention initially centered on military interventions and the development of state capacity. Attention gradually evolved towards building physical capital through investments in infrastructure and public services and finally turned towards building human capital through investments in education, health, and social safety nets. We characterize the way in which president-level characteristics, like age and gender, predict the main policy issues. Our findings offer novel insights into the dynamics of presidential attention and the factors that shape it, expanding our understanding of political agenda-setting.