Investigating interwoven and competitive fields exposes researchers to various obstacles and risks, among which is the risk of assimilation to a particular subgroup or clique. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of a multi-party coalition of local government institutions, this paper is dedicated to this question. Comparing the various ways in which this research was interpreted by the coalition as well as its constituent parties highlights parts of the structures of this set-up as well as the challenges these present. Moreover, while these responses appear to correspond to the actors? positions within the set-up, they also reveal the importance of party labels, secret keeping, distance to allies, and representations of actors. Thus the research experience itself becomes a way of knowing the field under investigation better.