DOI: 10.5064/f6td9v7g
title: Constitute: Constitutional text for scholars and​ drafters

description: &lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Data Abstract&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;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. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;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 .&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Data Model&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;h3&gt;Files Description&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;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). &lt;/p&gt;
description: Data Preparation and Tagging

The texts included in this dataset were analyzed in four stages. First, all texts were read and coded for content by two independent research assistants. Each coder read their assigned document (usually in English translation), and then coded the constitution based on the Comparative Constitutions Project conceptual scheme. Coders inputted their answers into a standardized online survey tool (instrument available at http://www.comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/files/surveyinstrument.pdf). The two sets of coded answers were then reconciled by a third senior coder using the same online tool. All relevant documents were available throughout this process, allowing coders to reference and cite the text throughout the coding process. Second, texts were cleaned and segmented. Many of the texts used for the coding process were based on scanned images (e.g. PDFs), which had to be converted into a machine-readable format. Procedures for text cleanup varied depending on the format of the original document, but most documents were converted into machine-readable text using OCR software, and hand-checked and cleaned by a research assistant to remove any OCR errors. Third, text was then segmented by a custom text parsing tool. For each document, a research assistant read through the text and identified the names of the organizational headers used in the document (e.g. “Chapter” or “Article). Using these names as inputs, the tool divided each text into paragraphs, and extracted the organizational hierarchy contained in the document. The results were then analyzed and corrected by the research assistant as necessary. Fourth, content tags were applied to the segmented texts. Using the human-coded content citations created in part (1) as an input, the text parsing tool attempted to assign content tags to the appropriate sections of the text. These provisional tags were then reviewed and supplemented by research assistants, and uploaded to the public Constitute site. Once the data are available on Constitute, users are encouraged to submit error reports or contest coding decisions as appropriate, offering a final validation and correction opportunity.
description: Most of the sources for the textual excerpts are public documents. While some of the constitutions tagged here are under copyright, the two organizations that hold the copyright have provided permission to distribute the material as long as it is not used for commercial purposes. Details about the copyright status of individual documents can be found in the 0_Constitute_copyrights.tab file
description: The sources for the constitutional texts are many and varied, but most are drawn from official government texts, texts provided by Oxford University Press, or texts provided by HeinOnline.