Unearthing grounded normative theory: practices and commitments of empirical research in political theory

ABSTRACT

Many normative political theorists have engaged in the systematic collection and/or analysis of empirical data to inform the development of their arguments over the past several decades. Yet, the approach they employ has typically not been treated as a distinctive mode of theorizing. It has been mostly overlooked in surveys of normative political theory methods and methodologies, as well as by those critics who assert that political theory is too abstracted from actual political contestation. Our aim is to unearth this grounded normative theory (GNT) approach – to identify its definitive practices and highlight its potential significance. We detail four overlapping commitments characteristic of GNT. These include commitments to expanding the comprehensiveness of input for normative arguments through original empirical research and/or analysis, recursivity in the development of normative claims, attentiveness to the systematic inclusion of a range of voices and ways of knowing, and accountability to those engaged by the theorist in empirical contexts. We discuss methodological distinctions within GNT, including between more- and less-solidaristic approaches. We discuss how GNT answers calls for theorists to engage more closely with empirical political dynamics and we consider responses to possible critiques.

KEYWORDS:

• Grounded normative theory
• democratic theory
• critical theory
• indigenous theory
• methodology
• ethnography
• non-ideal theory
• public philosophy
• practice
• solidarity
• inductive
• deductive
• analytic

Acknowledgments

The authors which to thank Richard Bellamy, two anonymous reviwers, and the many conversation partners during the development of this article: Afsoun Afsahi, Jordan Buffie, Maxwell A. Cameron, Angela Chnapko, Teddy Cruz, Monique Deveaux, Michael Goodhart, Lisa Herzog, Cricket Keating, Kristi Heather Kenyon, Peggy Kohn, Anthony Laden, Catherine Lu, Jamie Mayerfeld, Jeanne Morefield, Peter Niesen, Agustín Goenaga Orrego, John Parkinson, James Tully, Inés Valdez, Hendrick Wagenaar, Laurel Weldon, Sarah Wiebe, Melissa Williams, Margot Young, Benardo Zacka, and Lorenzo Zucca. We also wish to thank Paula Baeurich and Jemima Neubert for work finalizing the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See the ‘Critical Dialogue’ between Michael Goodhart and Erman and Möller in Perspectives on Politics (Goodhart et al., 2019).

2. See in particular the chapters by David Miller and by Adam Swift and Stuart White.

3. In Blau (2017), one chapter on comparative political theory methodologies includes grounded normative theory within its discussion (Ackerly & Rochana, 2017).

4. Elsewhere, Miller and co-author Sundas Ali have empirically tested some of Miller’s longstanding claims about the importance of shared national sentiment, with mixed results (Miller & Ali, 2014).

5. Johnson et al. (2017). See also Justin de Leon on Lakota cosmologies of security (De Leon, 2020) and Stacy Simplican’s work on modes of public participation and the politics of presence of people with cognitive disabilities (Simplican, 2015; Simplican et al., 2014).

6. We also thank Jamie Mayerfeld for raising some these issues.

7. This is a key part of a feminist research ethic more generally (Ackerly & True, 2009, Ackerly & True, 2019, Ackerly, 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brooke Ackerly

Brooke Ackerly is Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. In her research, teaching, and collaborations, she utilizes empirical research on activism and the lived experience of those affected by injustice, including human rights and climate change. Her work utilizing GNT includes Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (2000), Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (2008), and Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice (2018).

Luis Cabrera

Luis Cabrera is Associate Professor of Political Science at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He has published widely on citizenship and migration, democratic theory and international organizations. He has conducted fieldwork for grounded normative theory projects in India, Europe, the United States, Mexico and Southeast Asia. His most recent monograph is The Humble Cosmopolitan: Rights, Diversity, and Trans-State Democracy (Oxford UP, 2020).

Fonna Forman

Fonna Forman is Associate Professor of political theory at the University of California, San Diego, and founding Director of the UCSD Center on Global Justice. Since publishing Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy (Cambridge 2010) her work has become increasingly ‘grounded’, focused on poverty, climate justice, borders and participatory urbanization. With architect Teddy Cruz, she leads the UCSD Community Stations, a network of field stations based in marginalized neighborhoods across the US-Mexico border.

Genevieve Fuji Johnson

Genevieve Fuji Johnson is a Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. She studies and teaches grounded normative theory and feminist political thought. Recent publications include ‘Sex Work Governance Models: Variations in a Criminalized Context,’ Sexuality Research and Social Policy, published on-line May 2020 (Kerry Porth co-author) and ‘Whiteness, Power, and the Politics of Demographics in the Governance of the Canadian Academy,’ Canadian Journal of Political Science, September 2020 (Robert Howsam co-author).

Chris Tenove

Chris Tenove is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. His current research focuses on online challenges to democracy and human rights such as incivility and hate speech, disinformation, and cyber-security threats faced by activists. In addition to book chapters and policy reports, he has published work in journals such as Political Research Quarterly (2020), International Journal of Press/Politics (2020), and Ethnic and Racial Studies (2019).

Antje Wiener

Antje Wiener is Chair of Political Science at Universität Hamburg and By-Fellow at Hughes Hall, Cambridge. She is an International Relations theorist and her monographs include Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global IR (CUP 2018), A Theory of Contestation (Springer 2014), and The Invisible Constitution of Politics (CUP 2008). Her articles have appeared in International Theory (2021), International Affairs (2019), Review of International Studies (2009), and European Journal of International Relations (2004) among others.