Words and Votes in the Greek Parliament, 1865–1915: A Discursive-Network Theory of Legislative Order

Greece between 1865 and 1915 is typically characterised as a period of crises, clientelism, and weak institutions. But what if we've been looking in the wrong place? This paper shifts attention from executive turnover to the legislature itself, drawing on newly digitised parliamentary archives of speeches and roll-call votes.

 How do legislators coordinate when party boundaries are fluid and no whips enforce discipline? This study develops a discursive-network theory of legislative order, proposing that shared language serves as the mechanism through which trust is established, coalitions are formed, and political coordination becomes possible without formal party structures. The paper combines network analysis of voting behaviour with NLP of parliamentary speech, using a scalable OCR and LLM pipeline designed for historical, non-English text.

 The findings speak to foundational questions in political science: the origins of party systems, the micro-foundations of cleavage "freezing", and how legislatures function under weak institutional constraints. These questions have relevance for contexts ranging from post-colonial parliaments to contemporary party system collapses.

Meet our speaker and chair

Aristeidis Grivokostopoulos is a Doctoral Affiliate at the Hellenic Observatory and PhD candidate in Economic History.

His research focuses on the economic and political history of Greece during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He aims to examine the political economy of sovereign debt and monetary institutions in late 19th-century Europe, focusing in particular on the case of Greece. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources — from parliamentary debates to diplomatic records — he investigates how changing geopolitics, financial conditions and domestic politics influenced fiscal and monetary decision-making. He intends to make use of the latest tools in large scale textual analysis, such as the application of large language models (LLMs), to map the pressures and choices faced by Greek policymakers.

Prior to the PhD, he completed his MSc in Financial History at LSE, where his dissertation was on the arrival of the Great Depression in Greece in 1931, systematically analysing correspondence between the Bank of Greece, and its counterparties, at the time. Before joining academia, he worked in the financial services and technology, for industry-leading companies such as Morgan Stanley and Creandum. Outside of his doctoral research, he has played an active role in the student and professional community of Greeks in London, organising speaker events and conferences.

Professor Vassilis Monastiriotis is Director of the LSE Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus - Hellenic Observatory, Professor in Political Economy and Eleftherios Venizelos Chair of Contemporary Greek Studies at the European Institute, LSE.

The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as a leading research centre on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. In 2024, it became the LSE Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus with a strategy to expand its research base within LSE and beyond. The Centre produces world-leading, non-partisan research, critically engaging with key issues and fostering debate among academics, policymakers, and the public. Its work spans academic research, knowledge exchange, and policy impact.