Résumés
Résumé
Malgré un débat académique qui offre un cadre conceptuel riche quant aux influences de certains acteurs internationaux sur la scène nationale, les chercheurs éprouvent des difficultés méthodologiques quand il s’agit d’étudier qualitativement l’impact des influences externes dans une transition démocratique. Ces enjeux sont plus marqués lorsque la recherche cible un pays du monde arabo-musulman. L’identification des acteurs impliqués, l’accès aux informateurs, les biais d’interaction lors des entretiens et le positionnement du chercheur par rapport à un sujet complexe constituent quelques-uns des obstacles rencontrés. Comment, alors, mener une étude sur le contexte international d’une transition démocratique dans le monde arabe? En s’appuyant sur les expériences de recherche de l’auteur sur le terrain en Tunisie, cet article propose diverses stratégies susceptibles d’augmenter les chances de réussite d’une enquête qualitative sur l’impact des influences externes dans un processus de démocratisation d’un pays du monde arabe.
Mots-clés :
- Recherche qualitative,
- terrain exploratoire,
- triangulation des données,
- boule de neige,
- transition démocratique tunisienne
Abstract
Despite an academic debate offering a rich conceptual framework for the influences of certain international players on the national scene, researchers faced methodological difficulties in studying qualitatively the impact of external influences in a transition to democracy. The issues are even more apparent when the research targets a country in the Arab-Moslem world. Identifying the players involved, access to informants, interaction bias during meetings and the position of the researcher in relation to a complex subject are a few of the obstacles encountered. How then should one study the international context of a transition to democracy in the Arab world? Based on the author’s experiences with field research, this article suggests various strategies likely to increase the chances for success of a qualitative study of the impact of outside influences on the process of introducing democracy to a country in the Arab world such as Tunisia.
Keywords:
- Qualitative research,
- preliminary fieldwork,
- data triangulation,
- snowballing sample,
- tunisian democratic transition
Parties annexes
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