This book turns the Open Congress API into a set of reproducible, extensible analysis chapters about Philippine legislative activity.
The current chapter set is organized around questions the API can answer well:
How legislative output changes across congresses
How House Bills and Senate Bills differ in volume, timing, and scope
Which policy topics appear most often in bill titles, abstracts, and subjects
Which legislators author the most bills, and how productivity varies by chamber
How membership histories can be used to study tenure and chamber movement
How metadata quality varies and what bill title action verbs tell us about intent
How legislator networks collaborate and where political dynasty proxies emerge
How bill filing pacing aligns with first 100 days milestones, disasters, and executive priorities
The chapters are executable. They call the API configured by
OPEN_CONGRESS_API_BASE_URL, defaulting to
https://open-congress-api.bettergov.ph/api.
How to read each chapter¶
Every chapter follows the same shape so results are easy to audit and extend:
Goals and hypotheses open each chapter, stating what we set out to learn and what we expect to find before looking at the charts.
Code is collapsed by default. Each analysis cell is tagged so its source is hidden behind a toggle — click to expand and inspect the exact logic. Complex steps carry inline comments explaining what they do.
Graphics are the evidence. Narrative text between charts connects each result back to the stated hypotheses.
Charts are interactive. Look for:
Congress selectors — pick any congress from 8 to 20 (where the data supports it) via dropdowns or an editable
SELECTED_CONGRESSparameter.Searchable tables — type a legislator’s name (or a subject, or a congress) to filter, and click any column header to sort.
Plotly toggles — buttons and dropdowns that re-slice a chart client-side.
Data completeness is stated up front. The API overview chapter measures how complete each field is per congress, so you know which questions the data can and cannot answer for a given era.
API-backed chapters¶
Start with the API Overview and Data Completeness chapter to confirm the data contract and see where the gaps are, then move into the analysis chapters. Each chapter keeps its data wrangling code close to the visualization and interpretation so the work can be audited and extended.