Sentences From the House of Commons Annotated for Temporal Focus, 1979-2023

This collection includes almost four thousand sentences taken from the Commons Hansard between 1979 and 2023, and independently coded for their temporal focus by two researchers. The sentences were drawn randomly from XML versions of the Hansard Corpus as maintained by https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/, and after removing procedural language found in italics, or language with no associated speaker. The data therefore approximate a simple random sample of the population of sentences spoken in the Commons during this period. Sentences are classified as being about the past, the future, or the present. The data contains the codings given independently by each researcher, together with the consensus coding established by the two researchers working jointly. The purpose of this human coding was to fine-tune a large language model in order to classify other sentences from the UK House of Commons and other English language legislative bodies; to use these classifications to determine how much politicians speak about the future; and to determine how, if at all, the proportion of speech which is about the future changes in different individual and political contexts. The coding is specific to parliamentary language, and transferability to other contexts may be limited.<p>Some of us dwell on the past. Others live in the present. Others still look towards the future. The degree to which our thoughts are directed to the past, present or future is called our *temporal focus*. Psychologists have studied people's temporal focus, and have found that future-focused individuals are more likely to engage in pro-social behaviours and perform well in their studies and in their careers. This project is about politicians' temporal focus. Politicians are often accused of having a particular temporal focus-of focusing too much on the present, or of being &quot;short-termist&quot;. This focus (runs the argument) prevents politicians from tackling long-term challenges such as climate change or caring for different generations. Tackling these challenges can involve making sacrifices now in order to gain advantages later. Politicians (and the voters who elect them) may discount these future benefits. The problem is that we don't know whether politicians are short-termist in this way. Indirect evidence is just that-indirect. Politicians who neglect climate change might do so because of short-termism, but might also do so because they don't believe in climate change, or believe that costs of tackling climate change outweigh the benefits. Direct evidence is better, but harder to collect. It is difficult to convince MPs to answer survey questions about their attitudes, and impossible to do so for historical politicians. This project solves this problem by developing an unobtrusive measure of politicians' temporal focus by looking at the language they use. Computational linguists have shown how to extract different features-parts of speech, dates, and abstract references to the future or past-from large bodies of text in an automated fashion. Psychologists have shown how these features of a person's language use can be used to predict their temporal focus. These studies have been carried out on short texts (typically social media posts) by young adults or students. We extend these techniques to cover politicians' speech, and produce measures of politicians' temporal focus for politicians in 3 national parliaments (the UK Parliament, the Australian Senate, and the Finnish Eduskunta). We test whether these measures make sense by comparing them to questionnaire responses from a small group of politicians in the UK Parliament, surveyed in collaboration with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Future Generations. We then go on to show how politicians' temporal focus varies according to age and different political and life events, and compare temporal focus in politicians to temporal focus in the general population. Knowing about politicians' temporal focus is valuable for its own sake, but it is also valuable because it allows us to answer questions about how we design our political institutions. Our project looks at three different institutional choices: the choice to elect or appoint politicians, the choice to have longer or shorter parliamentary terms, and the choice to have specialised institutions which focus on the future. By careful within-country comparisons, we test whether particular institutional choices change politicians' temporal focus beyond what we would expect as a result of ageing and chance events. Our project has concrete benefits for countries considering institutional reforms. In the UK, numerous groups have called for &quot;more long term thinking in UK policy&quot;. In New Zealand, party leaders have expressed willingness to lengthen parliamentary terms to avoid short-termism. If we want to avoid short-termism, and promote a different temporal focus in our politicians, we need to be able to measure temporal focus, and relate temporal focus to different institutional choices. This research will do just that.</p>本数据集包含近4000条语句，取自1979年至2023年间的《下议院辩论记录》（Commons Hansard），并由两名研究人员独立对其时间指向（temporal focus）进行编码标注。 这些语句从https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/维护的《汉萨德语料库》（Hansard Corpus）XML版本中随机抽取，并剔除了斜体标注的程序性语言以及无关联发言者的语句。因此，该数据集近似为该时期内英国下议院所有发言语句的简单随机抽样样本。 语句被划分为关于过去、现在或未来三类。数据中包含两名研究人员各自独立给出的编码结果，以及二人联合达成的共识编码。 本次人工编码的目的在于：微调大语言模型（Large Language Model），以实现对英国下议院及其他英语立法机构的其他语句进行分类；利用这些分类结果统计政客提及未来的发言占比；并探究在不同个体与政治语境下，提及未来的发言比例是否会发生变化，以及如何变化。 该编码规则针对议会语境语言设计，迁移至其他语境的适用性或存在局限。 我们中有人沉湎于过去，有人活在当下，还有人则着眼未来。我们的思维指向过去、现在还是未来的程度，被称为时间指向（temporal focus）。心理学家已对人们的时间指向展开研究，发现面向未来的个体更易做出亲社会行为，且在学业与事业中表现更优异。 本项目聚焦政客的时间指向。人们常指责政客存在特定的时间指向——要么过于关注当下，要么便是“短视主义”。按此逻辑，这种时间指向会阻碍政客应对气候变化等长期挑战，或是无法兼顾不同世代的利益。应对这类挑战往往需要当下做出牺牲，以在未来换取收益。政客（以及选举他们的选民）可能会对未来的收益打折扣。 问题在于，我们并不清楚政客是否真的存在这类短视主义。间接证据仅仅是间接的：政客忽视气候变化，可能是出于短视，也可能是因为他们不相信气候变化的存在，或是认为应对气候变化的成本高于收益。直接证据更为可靠，但却更难获取。要说服英国下议院议员（Member of Parliament, MP）回答关于其态度的调查问卷并非易事，而对历史政客则更是无从谈起。 本项目通过分析政客使用的语言，开发一种无侵入式的政客时间指向测量方法，以此解决这一难题。计算语言学家已探索出从大规模文本中自动提取各类特征的方法，包括词性、日期以及对过去或未来的抽象指代。心理学家则证实，可通过个体语言使用的这些特征预测其时间指向。不过，这类研究大多针对年轻成年人或学生发布的短文本（通常为社交媒体帖文）展开。 我们将这类技术拓展至政客的演讲语料，为三个国家的议会（英国议会、澳大利亚参议院以及芬兰议会（Eduskunta））中的政客构建了时间指向测量指标。我们通过与全党派议会未来世代小组合作，对英国议会中的一小部分政客进行问卷调查，并将测量结果与问卷反馈进行对比，以验证这些指标的合理性。随后，我们进一步分析了政客的时间指向如何随年龄、不同政治事件与人生经历发生变化，并将政客的时间指向与普通大众的时间指向进行了对比。 了解政客的时间指向本身就具有价值，同时，这也能帮助我们解答如何设计政治制度的相关问题。本项目聚焦三类不同的制度选择：选举或任命政客的制度、议会任期长短的设置，以及设立专注未来的专门机构的选择。通过严谨的国家内部对比，我们检验了特定制度选择是否会在老龄化与随机事件之外，进一步改变政客的时间指向。 本项目对正考虑制度改革的国家具有实际价值。在英国，众多团体呼吁“英国政策需更具长远眼光”。在新西兰，政党领袖已表示愿意延长议会任期以规避短视主义。若我们希望规避短视主义，并引导政客树立不同的时间指向，就必须能够测量时间指向，并将其与不同的制度选择联系起来。本研究正是为此而开展。