02935 - Laboratory (Lab4)

Learning outcomes

The student, thanks to a laboratory activity selected from those that will be activated from year to year, develops transversal skills in the practical elaboration of the knowledge acquired in the course of study. She/He knows how to collect, organise and analyse complex information and present the results of their analyses in written and oral form.

Course contents

The workshop aims to provide a practical guide to the main empirical tools developed in political science to analyse the outcomes of electoral competition in democracies. After a brief theoretical introduction, students will learn how to use existing data sources (electoral manifestos, mass and elite survey data, expert surveys) and the main techniques developed to estimate the policy space and parties' positions. Particular attention will be paid to the manual and automated coding of political documents. At the end of the workshop, students will be able to construct and analyse the policy space in different elections and critically interpret both the competitive strategies of parties and the outcomes of electoral competition.

Readings/Bibliography

Foreign students are invited to contact the teacher at the beginning of the course to discuss about the programme.

Teaching methods

Lectures and computer-based practical exercises with teacher-led activities.

Assessment methods

For the purposes of the students' final assessment, the following elements will be considered:

• Participation and cooperation in the proposed classroom activities (20%);
• Classroom presentation (40%);
• Final paper (40%).

Teaching tools

Slides, dataset, scripts, replication data

Office hours

See the website of Luca Pinto