Sandra Leonie Field asks, in her essay here (https://theloop.ecpr.eu/data-mountains-and-usable-concepts-a-lesson-from-francis-bacon/), what is the best way to diversify the study of democracy?
Sandra Leonie Field’s insightful essay reminds us that the meaning of words “depends on its substantive content” and “the concrete practices or understandings to which it refers”. Like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, many dictatorships have the word ‘democracy’ in their country’s name or constitution. "A word means what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less" as Humpty Dumpty said in Through The Looking Glass. Francis Bacon’s most important lesson was the scientific method for unlocking the power of nature through systematic experiments, in contrast to scholasticism’s preoccupation with text. A great deal of social and political science is closer to scholasticism than empiricism. I suggest that the best way to diversify the study of democracy is to work on experiments to improve “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863) to create better models of democratic practice. This is a vast and complex field, ranging from democratic childrearing to global governance, but by helping people develop models of more effective and inclusive forms of democracy scholars can improve social conditions, just as the scientific method enabled people to improve conditions.
For more details of this argument and the role universities could play, please see Political Science and the Democratic Method (see: bit.ly/PolSc-DemMethod).
The best methodology to diversify the study of democracy is the use of philosophical phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis, as well as modern sociological theories, such as structural functionalism, conflict theories, symbolic interactionism, exchange theory, dramaturgical theory (especially - impression management), ethnomethodology, network theory and post-modernism.