Abstract
Objectives: The article examines the relationship between democratic reversals and scientific closure. It focuses on the effects that authoritarian and hybrid regimes are likely to have on the ways scholars study them and conduct their fieldwork.
Method: Thematic content analysis of articles on Eurasian politics published over a ten year period, with particular attention paid to reported methods and fieldwork.
Results: Scientific closure had as much to do with research cycles in the discipline as with democratic reversals. Notions of the region as democratizing persisted into the 2000s as scholars recycled data and conceptual frames from the 1990s. Fieldwork-driven research was more likely to detect autocratization.
Conclusion: While disciplinary consensus re-framed the region as autocratizing, the field remains vulnerable to scientific closure. Aside from the challenges posed by autocracies for fieldwork, the new disciplinary consensus may deter qualitative fieldwork and innovation in studying authoritarianism in Eurasia.
Method: Thematic content analysis of articles on Eurasian politics published over a ten year period, with particular attention paid to reported methods and fieldwork.
Results: Scientific closure had as much to do with research cycles in the discipline as with democratic reversals. Notions of the region as democratizing persisted into the 2000s as scholars recycled data and conceptual frames from the 1990s. Fieldwork-driven research was more likely to detect autocratization.
Conclusion: While disciplinary consensus re-framed the region as autocratizing, the field remains vulnerable to scientific closure. Aside from the challenges posed by autocracies for fieldwork, the new disciplinary consensus may deter qualitative fieldwork and innovation in studying authoritarianism in Eurasia.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 876-893 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Social Science Quarterly |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 28 Nov 2016 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Dec 2016 |
Keywords
- Comparative politics
- Methodology
- authoritarianism
- Democratisation
- Eurasia
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Political Science and International Relations
- Sociology and Political Science
Access to Document
- 06_Goode_SSQ.PDF
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Goode, J. P. (2016). Eyes wide shut: democratic reversals, scientific closure, and the study of politics in Eurasia. Social Science Quarterly, 97(4), 876-893, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12343. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.