Constitute: Constitutional text for scholars and drafters

Abstract

Constitute is a web application developed for the analysis of the text of written constitutions. At the heart of the application is a set of constitutional excerpts that are encoded with tags derived from a conceptual inventory used in the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), a related dataset that records the characteristics of national constitutions since 1789. The data collection deposited with QDR is a complete set of excerpts, together with topical tags, from in-force constitutions, as well as a few draft and historical constitutions, appearing on the site as of December 26, 2017. Data Abstract The data include the constitutions of nearly all independent states, as identified by Ward and Gledistch, in force as of December 26, 2017. Constitute’s conceptual organization was informed by its intended use as a public-facing data product. Since Constitute is intended to be usable for members of the public as well as real-life constitution-writers and academics, the project’s texts, content tags, and conceptual inventory are all organized with an eye towards readability and parsimony. This guiding principle is most noticeable in the dataset’s conceptual inventory, which covers roughly half as many items as the original Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) variable set. Constitute’s hierarchical variable organization — enabled by the Semantic Web technology underlying the project — is informed by similar concerns. To enhance usability (both visually on the project’s website and in downstream statistical applications), Constitute’s conceptual hierarchy is oriented in a shallow but wide fashion, with few hierarchical layers and many sub-categories at each layer. In compiling data for QDR, we included all information which is available on the Constitute website at the time of submission. These data consist of Semantic Web (.nt) files that include excerpts from nearly all in-force constitutions as of 2017, with accompanying content tags. The data follow a conceptual framework developed by the Principal Investigators in the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), a related dataset that records some 600 characteristics of national constitutions enacted since 1789. Documentation and data for that project, including data and texts for older constitutions, are available on the project website, at https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org . Data Model The textual excerpts are derived from the CCP’s core dataset, which records a comprehensive set of characteristics of historical constitutions. The Constitute dataset consists of two main pieces: (1) a set of conceptual tags and a related conceptual ontology; and (2) a collection of cleaned and tagged constitutional texts. Constitute tracks some 300 unique conceptual tags at the paragraph level of each individual constitution, which are organized into a hierarchical, extensible ontology. Example tags might include “Free Expression,” “Head of State Powers,” or “National Motto.” The Constitute conceptual inventory is available in QDR as an OWL file, a graph-based Semantic Web format that allows for formal descriptions of hierarchical classification schemes. In accordance with the general Semantic Web framework, OWL files can be easily expanded to include new categories and relationships, allowing researchers to extend the Constitute coding scheme for their own purposes. Each constitutional text in Constitute is represented in a related hierarchical format. Currently, the QDR sample consists of nearly all in-force national constitutions as of 2017, as well as a few draft and historical texts. Files Description The data collection deposited with QDR is a complete set of excerpts -- together with topical tags – as they appeared on the site as of December 26, 2017. Metadata about each constitution is also provided (as an .nt file), along with the project’s conceptual inventory (as an .owl file) and copyright information (as a spreadsheet).