What do people communicate as survey participants? A review of discursive methodologies in democratic innovations research

This paper examines methods of political science from the vantage point of deliberative democracy. It investigates how instruments of political science might activate responses which are more or less accessible and empowering to participants. Over 30 years have passed since Dryzek declared ‘the mismeasure of political man’ (1990), and called for more discursive methods of political science. This paper argues that measuring political behaviors in ways that assume citizens capable of political action (still) faces several challenges, some of which have gained traction in recent years through ‘failures’ of elections or referenda, which were frequently framed as people simply not being capable of making voting decisions in line with their interests. This paper re-examines this argument, and asks in how far political science might invoke deliberative versus undeliberative ways of communicating about politics. It then presents a systematic overview of discursive methodologies in the field of democratic innovations. Potential areas of further development are identified, and the potentials of deliberation as a method of political science is explored. The paper posits that broadening the forms of communication that are activated or permissible in empirical methods strengthens the extent to which political science can predict real-world behavior, and can even contribute to societal democratization.