Michael Laver is Professor of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. His recent publications include: Making and Breaking Governments (with Kenneth A Shepsle; Private Desire, Political Action; and Playing Politics: the Nightmare Continues. His current research focusses on computer coded text analysis and dynamic models of party competition.

• PART I Overview; Chapter 1 Why should we estimate the policy positions of political actors?, Michael Laver; Chapter 2 Searching for the positions of political actors, Peter Mair; PART II Expert coded text analysis; Chapter 3 Manifesto research since 1979, Andrea Volkens; Chapter 4 Validating the Manifesto Research Group approach, Ian Budge; Chapter 5 Position and salience in the policies of political actors, Michael Laver; Chapter 6 A framework for analysing local party policy emphases in Scotland, Bodil Agasøster; Chapter 7 The policy space of party manifestos, Michael D. McDonald, Silvia M. Mendes; Chapter 8 Analysing party dynamics by taking Part Ially overlapping snapshots, Wouter van der Brug; Chapter 9 Estimating interparty policy distances from election programmes in Quebec, 1970-89, François Petry, Réjean Landry; PART III Computer coded text analysis; Chapter 10 A natural sentences approach to the computer coding of party manifestos, Leonard Ray; Chapter 11 Measurement of party positions on the basis of party programmes, media coverage and voter perceptions, Jan Kleinnijenhuis, Paul Pennings; Chapter 12 The computer coding of political texts, John Garry; Chapter 13 Estimating policy positions from the computer coding of political texts, Miranda de Vries, Daniela Giannetti, Lucy Mansergh; Chapter 14 Tracking estimates of public opinion and party policy intentions in Britain and the USA, Judith Bara; PART IV Conclusion; Chapter 15 How should we estimate the policy positions of political actors?, Michael Laver;