Mauricio Mandujano Manriquez wrote the three paragraphs below in March 2022.

"Leaving room for falsification acknowledges epistemic humility. In the 17th century, the Leiden Circle removed any privileged epistemic status from all historical accounts. Thus, they dismantled the pre-eminence of the Scriptures. When studying democracy, we must follow this agnostic treatment towards all conceptions of democracy and empirical accounts alike.

Contrary to Kyong-Min Son's criticisms of scientific neutrality, if democratic theory had taken a scientific turn during the last century, it would have 'interrogated' racial inequality, militarism and political apathy against a base assumption of political equality. Science implies an inexorable epistemic humility; a willingness to be proven wrong. That's the logic of scientific discovery.

In addition, scientific neutrality follows Feynman's dictum for reporting scientific findings in a disinterested manner. That is, it avoids presenting an idea contrary to what the evidence suggests. If the evidence suggests that democracy is less successful in contexts of low impersonal trust, we must not obscure or misinterpret this fact. Instead we must acknowledge this ground truth. Doing so opens the door to studying how to instil impersonal trust, if that is a desired political objective."

For more, see: https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-science-of-democracy-demands-scientific-thinking/

His points about humility and agnosticism but also his sensitivity to context (to the participants of a study on democracy and that study's intended audience) are, I think, remarkable and should be celebrated.

I think this way specifically because of how biased, and exclusionary, much of democratic theory has been in the last century, especially. Manriquez is asking for a balanced treatment of the democracies in the world and I see this as a direct contribution to the "democratization of democracy studies".

What do you think of Manriquez's encouragements?

https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-science-of-democracy-demands-scientific-thinking/