Contextual Methodology in the Study of Democracy: The Case of Academic Freedom and Democratic Free Speech

Democracy presupposes free speech, and democracy is central to one of the most important arguments for free speech. This connection both concerns the legitimacy of political decisions that are coercively enforced, which on democratic argument presuppose an open debate where citizens subjected to the decision should have the opportunity to participate, and the quality of democratic decisions, which on standard arguments for free speech is increased by an open debate. These arguments are well known from both democratic theory and free speech debates, but they are here usually articulated at a high level of abstraction. Furthermore, the arguments rely on assumptions about connections between how speech is regulated and how citizens participate in democratic debates that are really empirical claims. This both goes for the general claim that free speech makes for better quality of decisions, and for more specific claims, such as the well-known argument about the danger of so-called chilling effects, i.e., the claim that even justified limits on free speech that are enforced by sanctions risk generating problematic forms of self-censorship where citizens refrain from making legal utterances out of fear for being sanctioned. The paper considers how political theory concerned with democracy and free speech should address empirical assumptions like these that are central to the normative claims being made. This focus links to recent debates about the methodology of normative political theory, which – among other things – precisely have focused on how empirical studies, e.g. empirical political science, informs normative political theory, and vice versa. Several methodological discussions are relevant to the specific question about democracy and free speech. The paper will consider the overall question about the relation between normative and empirical claims in relation to a number of these: a) Contextualism, i.e. the view that the justification of normative political principles depends on and should be discussed in relation to the specific contexts in which the principles should be applies (rather than principles being abstract and context-independent claims that are simply applied to a given context); b) Practice-dependence, i.e. the more specific view that the justification and specification of normative principles depends on the type of relations that principles are supposed to govern and the point and purpose of the practices in question; and c) “Ethnographic sensibility”, i.e. the concrete proposal to use ethnographic methods to study specific contexts and practices for the purpose of normative political arguments. In keeping with these methodological approaches, the paper focuses on a specific context in relation to the broader issue about democracy and free speech, namely academic freedom and the contribution to democratic debate by academics. The paper both considers how such a focus can help normative political theorists address the empirical assumptions of arguments about democracy and free speech and which concrete methodological challenges doing so poses for normative political theory.