ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces SKAD as a research program for the analysis of political debates in general and referendum debates in particular. Referendum research normally applies the quantitative research instruments developed in the context of election and/or political communication studies. These studies mostly look for universal explanatory models on electoral behaviour and hence on why people voted as they did, how campaigns affected voting behaviour and why referenda failed or succeeded. Thereby they tend to neglect the diverging political and cultural contexts of the case studies observed. SKAD can help to reconstruct the structures of political meaning making deeply embedded in the respective socio-cultural settings. In order to illustrate how to apply SKAD to politics, the chapter starts with some important modifications to the original program, the most central of which is the addendum of the argument as another analytical category. The argument conceived in this way provides for the connectivity with the study of political debates as well as different kinds of rhetorical research. The chapter gives helpful guidance for organising the research process. In a third section, the chapter exhibits some illustrative examples of the interpretive analysis making close reference to the case studies examined. Thereby, it proposes different synoptical tools that are applicable to other studies as well and might be helpful for the integration and/or the visualisation of the results. Finally, the chapter is summed up in a short conclusion, which also gives an outlook to where SKAD-based research on political debates could go from there.
