Talking the Talk: Exploring Conflict in ECB Speeches with Speaker-topic Networks

• In Event: New Methods for Studying European Politics

Abstract

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank sets ECB policy and communicates policy decisions to other EU institutions, the markets, and the general public. Despite its central role at the heart of European economic governance, we know relatively little about the degree to which its policy decisions are contested. In this paper we shed new light on conflict in the ECB Governing Council by studying the speeches made by Governing Council members. We first unveil the latent topical content of the speeches using a dynamic topic-modeling approach, and then construct a bipartite speaker-topic network to capture evolving issue coalitions over time. Our results demonstrate that the policy focus of the ECB Governing Council and the issue coalitions driving this focus have evolved significantly over time. This variation can be explained by both individual-level speaker characteristics, and the political, economic, and institutional context in which decision-makers interact at the national level.

Authors

• James P Cross, University College Dublin

• Derek Greene, University College Dublin