Epistemic orientation in parliamentary discourse is associated with deliberative democracy

arXiv cs.CL / 4/22/2026

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Key Points

The study proposes a scalable way to measure “epistemic orientation” in political speech by using an Evidence–Minus–Intuition (EMI) score derived from large language model (LLM) ratings and embedding-based semantic similarity.
Using 15 million parliamentary speech segments from 1946–2025 across seven countries, the researchers analyze how EMI changes over time and how it relates to deliberative democracy.
They find EMI is positively associated with deliberative democracy within countries over time, and the relationship holds in both contemporaneous and lagged analyses.
EMI also correlates positively with governance qualities such as law transparency and predictable implementation.
Overall, the results suggest that the evidential vs. intuitive character of political discourse is important for both democratic deliberation and governance outcomes.

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.