The Political Use of Evaluations in Democratic Discourse: Enrichment or Exclusion?

Abstract

This article asks the question of how the political use of evaluations enriches democratic discourse. It builds on the results of a multi-year research project on the use of evaluations in direct-democratic debates in Switzerland in the fields of health and education. The results of quantitative and qualitative content analyses of documents related to 221 votes and a split-ballot survey show that the use of evaluations provides policy-relevant information and substantive justifications, leads to less normative arguments, and increases interactivity of discourse. However, evaluations are particularly used by elite actors in their argumentation, but also to receive information on policies. This leads to a separation of the arena of deliberation in an expert discourse that includes empirical evidence and a lay discourse that eschews empirical knowledge.