Reimagining the Political Interview: Participatory Designs in Researching Populist Actors

In the study of populist parties and movements, much scholarly attention has been devoted to the recruitment of hard-to-reach groups—sympathisers, voters, and, in particular, to researching political elites whose relationship with academia is often marked by distrust and contestation. Interviews with populist representatives are frequently characterised by complex interactional dynamics shaped by the interviewees’ scepticism towards academic authority, which they may perceive as part of the very “elite” system they oppose. This paper contributes to the methodological debate on researching populist actors by presenting findings from two qualitative interview strategies focused on visions of the future among members of the Czech Chamber of Deputies elected for populist parties and movements (ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy–SPD, and Motorists). The first strategy follows a relatively conventional semi-structured interview framework, offering respondents predefined future scenarios across various domains (foreign relations, family and gender, environment) to provoke debate and reflection. The second adopts an experimental, participatory design that invites a voter or sympathiser of the given party to act as a co-interviewer. By deliberately disrupting the interviewer–interviewee dyad, this approach reconfigures the power and epistemic dynamics of political interviewing. It tests whether involving a non-academic co-interviewer can foster a more open and less defensive interactional space while maintaining the integrity of scholarly inquiry. Drawing on approximately ten conducted interviews (including at least one experimental session), the paper reflects on the methodological, ethical, and interpretive implications of such hybrid encounters, and explores how participatory and reflexive designs might advance qualitative research in politically contested contexts. By experimenting with the interactional format of elite interviews, the paper demonstrates how methodological reflexivity and collaboration can address issues of access, trust, and epistemic asymmetry that often characterise research on populist actors. Beyond its empirical focus on Czech politics, the paper offers transferable insights for qualitative research facing similar challenges of legitimacy, positionality, and engagement in polarized political contexts.