Civility and Grounded Normative Theory

Abstract Scholars and public commentators frequently lament a rise in incivility in contemporary liberal democracies. However, normative and empirical research agendas on (in)civility have tended to develop separately, with few attempts to establish a fruitful dialogue between them. In this chapter, we critically assess this shortcoming in the study of (in)civility and propose grounded normative theory (GNT) as a solution. More specifically, we argue that GNT can help improve the study of (in)civility thanks to its fourfold commitment to comprehensiveness, recursivity, attentiveness to epistemological inclusion, and epistemic accountability. Each of these commitments, we argue, helps to address inadequacies in the current work on (in)civility. We draw on our recent empirically grounded normative work on (in)civility to advance this argument, using findings from research on deliberation in the Australian Parliament and observations from one of a series of deliberative mini-publics on human security challenges in the Philippines.