Informational Subsidies in Rising Powers: An Empirical Text-as-Data Analysis of the Civil BRICS Council

Informational Subsidies in Rising Powers: An Empirical Text-as-Data Analysis of the Civil BRICS Council | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Informational Subsidies in Rising Powers: An Empirical Text-as-Data Analysis of the Civil BRICS Council Rafael Voigtel This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8928364/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Policy makers operate under severe informational and capacity constraints, particularly in complex, multi-issue environments where agenda setting itself constitutes a critical stage of the policy process. This paper studies whether structured civil-society input can shape high-level agenda attention through an informational channel. We focus on the Civil BRICS Council, a consultative body that has existed for more than a decade within the BRICS framework but underwent a qualitative institutional transformation in 2024, when it was formally elevated and began producing a structured policy brief directed at heads of state. We construct a new corpus of official BRICS Leaders’ Declarations from 2009 to 2025 and the Civil BRICS Council’s 2024 policy brief. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, we map these texts into a panel of latent policy topics and measure agenda attention as topic prevalence. Our identification strategy exploits the 2024 institutionalization of the Council as a plausibly exogenous timing shock and implements a Difference-in-Differences design with continuous treatment intensity defined by the Council’s emphasis across topics. Rather than identifying a stable average treatment effect, the analysis shows that agenda uptake is highly conditional on semantic aggregation and institutional legibility. Evidence of alignment between civil society and leaders’ discourse emerges only at intermediate levels of topic aggregation, while both coarse and highly granular specifications fail to produce consistent effects. These findings suggest that informational subsidies do not translate mechanically into political attention, but depend on how issues are cognitively packaged and processed within institutions. JEL Codes: F53, F55, D78 BRICS civil society agenda setting text-as-data latent dirichlet allocation difference-in-differences Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8928364","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":600108720,"identity":"c42ef68d-156b-4034-9532-f4861e9a0365","order_by":0,"name":"Rafael Voigtel","email":"data:image/png;base64,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","orcid":"","institution":"Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Rafael","middleName":"","lastName":"Voigtel","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-02-20 18:24:26","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8928364/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8928364/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":106447084,"identity":"56bd9249-ff80-4734-a3cd-8f0edbc730d6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-08 15:41:42","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":741124,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"PaperInformationalSubsidiesinRisingPowersanonymous1.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8928364/v1_covered_fcc75e97-0664-4bed-92e5-bc80c9af97fd.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Informational Subsidies in Rising Powers: An Empirical Text-as-Data Analysis of the Civil BRICS Council","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"BRICS, civil society, agenda setting, text-as-data, latent dirichlet allocation, difference-in-differences","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8928364/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8928364/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003ePolicy makers operate under severe informational and capacity constraints, particularly in complex, multi-issue environments where agenda setting itself constitutes a critical stage of the policy process. This paper studies whether structured civil-society input can shape high-level agenda attention through an informational channel. We focus on the Civil BRICS Council, a consultative body that has existed for more than a decade within the BRICS framework but underwent a qualitative institutional transformation in 2024, when it was formally elevated and began producing a structured policy brief directed at heads of state. We construct a new corpus of official BRICS Leaders’ Declarations from 2009 to 2025 and the Civil BRICS Council’s 2024 policy brief. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation, we map these texts into a panel of latent policy topics and measure agenda attention as topic prevalence. Our identification strategy exploits the 2024 institutionalization of the Council as a plausibly exogenous timing shock and implements a Difference-in-Differences design with continuous treatment intensity defined by the Council’s emphasis across topics. Rather than identifying a stable average treatment effect, the analysis shows that agenda uptake is highly conditional on semantic aggregation and institutional legibility. Evidence of alignment between civil society and leaders’ discourse emerges only at intermediate levels of topic aggregation, while both coarse and highly granular specifications fail to produce consistent effects. 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