This research was a response to political turmoil. Our objectives were: to (a) pioneer comparative ethnographies of parliaments, politicians and people, (b) offer opportunities to scholars in the Global South, (c) influence academics and politicians to reimagine their communication and relationships. Our overall research question was: How are conflictual and co-operative relationships among and between parliamentarians and people expressed by political communication? More specific questions were: (a) How is knowledge used in different interactions and identity negotiations; (b) What kind of power struggles and exchanges lead to conflict, ruptures, violence, and consensus between politicians and people? (c) How are co-operative relationships, alliances and processes of collusion created? (d) How is political communication shaped by (and shaping) intersectional inequalities? To research these complex questions in six sites, we undertook ethnography (conventional, comparative, visual and collaborative), network analysis and digital analysis. The majority in the team were from the Global South; three Brazilians, one Ethiopian, one Portuguese British, two white British and one Asian British; the two advisors were both Dutch British, while we also employed five consultants from India, Fiji and Ethiopia.
Across all sites, we found that the study of political institutions requires attention beyond the orthodox approach that focuses on individual political leaders, and the outputs and practices that tend to be analysed in wholes: as institutions, systems or structures. We investigated relational processes, for which ethnography is an especially powerful methodological approach due to the inevitable interest in history, entanglements and connections that emerge out of a disposition towards holism and reflexivity. Our framework for analysing relationships and the knowledge was based on a musical analogy. We inquired into how ideologies are contested through ‘riffs’ tailored for different audiences, how rhythms of political work are performed in synchrony, asynchrony or dissonance, and how political rituals are enacted to negotiate or contest power and meaning. How these manifested, and with what results, varied across sites but all six sites shared an increasing rigidity and violence manifested within processes of political polarisation. The music is becoming discordant and repetitive. The polarisation no longer revolves primarily around fiscal policy and state intervention but arises out of disagreement about the nature of politics and even who we are as social, political and moral beings.
