'Popular Tribunes' and Their Agendas: Topic Modelling Slovak Presidents’ Speeches 1993-2020

Abstract

Since its birth as an independent republic in 1993, Slovakia has had five different presidents, four of whom were directly elected. Despite limited powers under the predominantly parliamentary regime, the office of president gained a prominent place in the Slovak political environment, not least through involvement in a number of high-profile constitutional crises, beginning with the Kovac-Meciar feud in the 1990s. Due to competence constraints, political speech is among the president’s main tools to influence political developments. However, text as a source of data has been largely neglected in existing scholarship on Central European presidents. In this exploratory study, I classify the content of presidential speeches using a topic model and analyse topical patterns over time and across different presidents. I find that topical variation can provide useful insights into relevant issues such as agenda shifts or intra-executive conflict.