ABSTRACT
As this volume attests, there is considerable debate about the status of ideas in understanding political change. There are indeed powerful conceptual reasons for exploring the role of ideas in shaping political processes and outcomes. As Hay (2002) notes, if we accept that actors do not possess flawless knowledge of the world, then we must also acknowledge the importance of ideas in shaping how people formulate, make and act upon decisions. But this raises questions about how and why political actors come to embrace certain ideas over others (Blyth 2002; Schmidt and Radaelli 2004) – issues that cannot be resolved through theoretical reflection alone but also need to be interrogated empirically (Hay and Smith 2005). This in turn raises questions as to which research methods are appropriate in the analysis of discourse. The chapter considers the benefits of a broad-ranging and inclusive research strategy informed by the principle of triangulation. It then provides a brief illustration of how such research might be undertaken through analysis of a discourse that has achieved considerable prominence in recent years: that of globalisation. It does so by looking at the Irish Republic – a country that has attracted considerable international attention on account of its perceived status as a ‘showpiece of globalisation’ (O’Hearn 2003: 73). Employing Schmidt’s (2002) distinction between the ‘cognitive’, ‘normative’, ‘co-ordinative’ and ‘communicative’ functions of discourse, the chapter seeks to map political discourses of globalisation in Ireland by using a variety of methods and techniques, both qualitative and quantitative.
