Epistemic orientation in parliamentary discourse is associated with deliberative democracy
Segun Aroyehun, Stephan Lewandowsky, David Garcia
TLDR
This paper introduces the EMI score to measure epistemic orientation in parliamentary discourse, linking evidence-based reasoning to deliberative democracy and governance.
Key contributions
- Introduces the Evidence--Minus--Intuition (EMI) score for measuring epistemic orientation in discourse.
- EMI score is derived using large language model ratings and embedding-based semantic similarity.
- Applied EMI to 15 million parliamentary speeches across seven countries from 1946 to 2025.
- Finds EMI positively correlates with deliberative democracy and transparent, predictable governance.
Why it matters
Understanding the epistemic nature of political discourse is vital for assessing democratic health. This research provides a scalable method to quantify it, showing that evidence-based reasoning strengthens deliberative democracy and improves governance quality. It offers new insights for fostering more effective political dialogue.
Original Abstract
The pursuit of truth is central to democratic deliberation and governance, yet political discourse reflects varying epistemic orientations, ranging from evidence-based reasoning grounded in verifiable information to intuition-based reasoning rooted in beliefs and subjective interpretation. We introduce a scalable approach to measure epistemic orientation using the Evidence--Minus--Intuition (EMI) score, derived from large language model (LLM) ratings and embedding-based semantic similarity. Applying this approach to 15 million parliamentary speech segments spanning 1946 to 2025 across seven countries, we examine temporal patterns in discourse and its association with deliberative democracy and governance. We find that EMI is positively associated with deliberative democracy within countries over time, with consistent relationships in both contemporaneous and lagged analyses. EMI is also positively associated with the transparency and predictable implementation of laws as a dimension of governance. These findings suggest that the epistemic nature of political discourse is crucial for both the quality of democracy and governance.
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