From Debate to Document: Text Mining Ideology in Ireland's Constitutional Founding

Litong Wang, Emory University

This study uses computational text analysis to examine how the 1937 Irish Constitution balanced Catholic moral authority with democratic governance, and how subsequent amendments shifted that balance over time. While existing scholarship has documented the negotiations between Éamon de Valera's government and Catholic clerical advisors, these accounts remain qualitatively actor-centered, focusing on institutional dynamics rather than the textual structure of the Constitution itself. This study fills that gap by applying quantitative methods to both the Constitution and the 1934–1937 parliamentary debates surrounding its drafting. Drawing on the full English text of Bunreacht na hÉireann and debates from Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann, I developed a dual-axis coding framework measuring Catholic-clerical (C) and liberal-pluralist (L) language at the article level. For parliamentary debates, I employed keyword frequency, collocation analysis, and sentiment scoring to trace how ideological tensions evolved across speakers, parties, and debate stages. Findings confirm that C and L framings cluster thematically within the 1937 text: articles on family, gender, education, and religion score higher on clericalism, while those on rights, sovereignty, and judicial review score higher on pluralism. Certain "compromise zones," notably Articles 41–44, display moderate levels of both, reflecting deliberate ideological balance. Analysis of amendments in 1972, 1995, 2015, and 2018 reveals a measurable shift toward liberal pluralism over time. Parliamentary debate analysis shows competing visions articulated by different political actors, with movement toward compromise language that prefigures the Constitution's final balance. This study contributes a replicable framework for measuring ideological tension in foundational legal texts, applicable to comparative studies of constitutions navigating religious authority and democratic governance. The Irish case offers a model for understanding how small, postcolonial nations can build constitutional identity without succumbing to authoritarianism—a question with continuing relevance for Taiwan, Poland, and post-colonial states worldwide.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 172. Religion, State Formation and Political Authority