Power in elite interviewing: Lessons from feminist studies for political science

Abstract

Power imbalances between participants are a central aspect of elite interviews. As feminist social scientists have argued, power imbalances can affect not only the practical structure of interviews but also experiential and normative dimensions of the relationship that emerges between interview parties. At present, there are limited means to concretely analyse power differentials in elite interviews. This article addresses this gap by drawing upon feminist sociolinguistics to develop an original “power index” to measure power in the elite interviewing context within the social sciences. The index is applied to interview text to explore its utility and develop a method that can be fruitfully extended in future studies. (108 words).