LAWPOL Research Infrastructure

The LAWPOL research infrastructure brings together public legal and political documents related to decision-making in a single service, thereby transforming the study of law, politics, and their intersections. The infrastructure consists of two applications: Lakitutka and its Swedish-language version Lagradarn, as well as Politiikkapöytä. These services compile documents produced by legislative drafters, stakeholders and experts, government proposals, political programmes, and parliamentary debates.

LAWPOL promotes interdisciplinary research and enhances understanding of the interface between law and politics. The infrastructure significantly facilitates the study of influence and interaction between legislators, politicians, courts, researchers, and interest groups, while also increasing transparency in governance and politics. Furthermore, LAWPOL improves access to information, thereby uniquely supporting the realization of democratic principles in practice.

Explore the LAWPOL research infrastructure applications via the following links: LAWPOL Lakitutka, LAWPOL Lagradarn, LAWPOL Politiikkapöytä.

Project Background

The LAWPOL research infrastructure is developed by the Faculty of Law and the Centre for Parliamentary Studies at the University of Turku, together with the Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi University. The LAWPOL project builds on earlier initiatives, including the open-access web service Lakitutka.fi, which highlights legislative drafting documents, and the political data corpus FINPARL.

As part of the LAWPOL project, a Swedish-language version of the Lakitutka application—Lagradarn—has been created, expanding opportunities to study legislation in Finland’s second official language. Additionally, the Politiikkapöytä application has been developed, combining the extensive datasets of Lakitutka and FINPARL and enriching them with materials from other data sources. Politiikkapöytä includes various digital tools that facilitate the exploration of these datasets.

Lakitutka, its Swedish-language counterpart Lagradarn, and Politiikkapöytä together form the new research infrastructure at the intersection of law and politics — LAWPOL.

Funding

The project has received funding from the European Union – NextGenerationEU instrument and is funded by the Academy of Finland under grant numbers 352827, 353569, and 352828.