Large Language Models: A Survey with Applications in Political Science

Large language models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm, but political scientists have been slow to adopt the tool. Attempts to use LLMs have been very limited in scope with scholars using LLMs for simple binary classification tasks or text generation. Whether this lack of update is due to lack of programming abilities or a result of hesitancy to use LLMs, political science is leaving a valuable tool on the table. This paper attempts to encourage uptake of LLMs for political science and makes three primary contributions: (1) it surveys LLMs from the practitioner’s perspective; (2) demonstrates the applicability of LLMs on a variety of political textual analysis applications; and (3) provides example software and data to encourage researchers to explore use of the tools.