The triumph of partisanship: political scientists in the public debate about Catalonia’s independence crisis (2010–2018)
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2021-06-10
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Participation in the public debate constitutes one of the most evident avenues for
political scientists to demonstrate the social relevance of the discipline. This article
focuses on two questions: the types of roles political scientists adopt in their public
interventions and the potential tensions between their public engagement and the
epistemic norms regulating academic and research activities. We investigate these
questions in the context of very salient political debates, involving a high degree of
political confrontation, where basic political beliefs, values, identities, and interests
are at stake. Focusing on the case of the public debate surrounding the Catalan independence
crisis (2010–2018), we demonstrate that in this type of context, (1) political
scientists mostly adopt a partisan stance in their public interventions, yet it is
also frequent that this is combined with the presence of academic elements in their
discourse; (2) demand side factors (media outlets’ editorial lines) reinforce these
partisan dynamics. These findings show that opportunities for increasing the social
relevance of political scientists in these highly contentious contexts might come at
the price of creating tensions that could erode the legitimacy of political science
knowledge before the public.
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Real-Dato, J., Rodríguez-Teruel, J., Martínez-Pastor, E. et al. The triumph of partisanship: political scientists in the public debate about Catalonia’s independence crisis (2010–2018). Eur Polit Sci 21, 37–57 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-021-00341-x