The HIPSTEXT (Hand-coded Italian Political Speeches and TEXTs) Database contributes to measuring the policy positions of partisan and non-partisan political actors on a common analytical framework. In particular, HIPSTEXT aims to investigate the positions of: (a) Trade Unions, (b) the Judiciary – ANM Factions, (c) Heads of State, (d) Party leaders’ congress speeches, (e) Motions of factions within Italian Prime Ministers’ party.

HIPSTEXT is based on a content analysis of (oral) political speeches or other (written) political documents. The coding scheme of the dataset follows the same method employed by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP). Per each text or speech, a number of quasi-sentences is identified and assigned to a number of pre-established categories that form the classification scheme. The original 56 categories of the CMP dataset have been extended to 68, to take into account the Italian political context (such as positive or negative references made by parties to the Catholic Church).

HIPSTEXT Database:

• Trade Unions (1947-2014, available on request);
• The Judiciary – ANM Factions (1977-2020, available on request);
• Heads of State (1946-2022, forthcoming);
• Party leaders’ congress speeches (1979-2019, forthcoming);
• Motions of factions within Italian Prime Ministers’ party (1954-2013, available on request).