Elite Ideology, Rhetoric and the Welfare State in the British House of Commons, 1987-2014

This paper uses speeches made in the British House of Commons to study the ideology and rhetoric of British parties and politicians regarding the welfare state, from 1987 to the present day. Starting with a collection of all debates and question times relevant to welfare in every parliamentary session, a variety of techniques from text analysis and natural language processing are used to investigate how ideology and rhetoric have changed over time, and how parties have converged and diverged. By analyzing the tone and content of speech, it also examines how the political framing of welfare recipients has evolved, including how and when politicians use harsher language to describe welfare recipients. Together, these techniques provide novel measurements of how parties and politicians have behaved. More importantly, the paper also addresses core questions in comparative political economy and the politics of European welfare states, including whether partisan divisions over welfare have changed over time, under what conditions political elites favor the creation, expansion or reduction of welfare policies, and how they strategically use language to advance their preferred policies. It represents the first part of a wider project that will use speech evidence from many European parliaments to show how the stances of European politicians and parties toward the welfare state differ not only over time, but also between countries.