# Epistemic orientation in parliamentary discourse is associated with deliberative democracy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19699 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19699/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Qwen2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10671/) (2024)
- [mGTE: Generalized Long-Context Text Representation and Reranking Models for Multilingual Text Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19669/) (2024)
- [From alternative conceptions of honesty to alternative facts in communications by U.S. politicians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10814/) (2022)
- [Wisdom of Instruction-Tuned Language Model Crowds. Exploring Model Label Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12973/) (2023)
- [Computational analysis of US Congressional speeches reveals a shift from evidence to intuition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07323/) (2024)
- [Turkronicles: Diachronic Resources for the Fast Evolving Turkish Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10133/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [German parties shifted towards intuition-based rhetoric after the far right's parliamentary breakthrough](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05075/) (2026)
- [Politics of Feelings: Emotional Expression and Legislative Effectiveness in the U.S. Congress](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10198/) (2026)
- [Epistemic orientation predicts legislative effectiveness among members of the US Congress](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11865/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

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.