The new and improved version (0.9) of the Swedish parliamentary debates is out!

Recently, the Swerik team has been improving the database of members of parliament (MP). We have now an almost complete catalog of all MPs that have had a position in the Swedish Riksdag, down to alternate member (ersättare) who only sat a couple of days in the parliament.

Another important metadata feature that has improved in the MP database is the so-called i-ort (i riksdagen kallad) or “in the Riksdag called”. This is the geographical name of where an MP is from. The i-ort of Olof Palme, for instance, was for a while “Palme in Vällingby” (Palme i Vällingby). This system was used to distinguish different MPs with the same name, and that was especially important during the bicameral era (1867–1970), but also up until the 1990s.

The improvement of i-ort has also pushed the quality of estimated accuracy for the identification of the speaker, that is the mapping of an MP speech with the corresponding MP in the database. This is shown in the graph below. From the 1920s, the accuracy is now often over 95 %. While improved significantly, we need to work more with the earlier decades, which we of course intend to do!