Unusual and subversive things are happening to normal politics in Scotland. In six months' time, about four million voters will be asked to decide on whether Scotland stays in the UK, in a straight in or out vote on independence. In one sense, this referendum is another set-piece conflict between well-known political actors.

Alistair Darling, the former chancellor, and Alex Salmond, the first minister, are playing out their leading roles in the often tribal media and the closed worlds of their political clans. It seems a local affair too, one for the Scots and much of the rhetoric and positions being taken seems tired.

But their role is being augmented and mediated in a striking way by people not normally directly involved in frontline politics: social scientists. The independence referendum has become a live-action laboratory for sociologists, economists and political scientists from across the UK, in a process expected to be replicated if the European Union referendum mooted for 2017 takes place.

In a unique programme of research – the largest attempted in Europe, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has ploughed more than £5m into interconnected work streams funding research that promises to have profound consequences for understanding why we vote and why we vote the way we do.

The future of Scotland and the UK programme includes live investigations by specialist research fellows on, for example, the future of the welfare state, whether Scotland votes yes or no (either way, the Scottish parliament will be given greater control over welfare policy); on the future of UK energy policy and supplies; on whether Scotland can share sterling with the UK. All those policies will impact on policy and life across the UK. The programme is intended to probe these issues neutrally. Uniquely, the findings will be published before the referendum vote in September – as both sides make their cases, subjecting both sides to live, real time scrutiny on blogs and social media. Neither side will escape challenge: this research will impact on the vote.

For the yes campaign, expect the research to puncture claims that radical reforms to welfare will be instantly available after independence, while the no camp's default position that an independent Scotland will be forced out of the EU while it applies for membership has been dismissed by academics.

It also looks at what happens on the day after? What happens to the losers? We too rarely consider that question in general elections, with the news dominated by the grinning victor's arrival at No 10 or taking cheers from the counting hall podium. But in this referendum, far more is at stake: for many, particularly on the nationalist side, this event has great emotional and psychological significance. For some, Salmond in particular, this will be a life-defining result. So one strand is focusing on the conduct of the campaign, the use of social media and on the aftermath – how will the winners and losers be reconciled, and – as must happen – become willing collaborators in either building a new independent state, or join forces instead to expand the powers of Edinburgh's devolved parliament within the UK.

In addition the British Election Study, a long-running research programme that tracks 30,000 voters across the UK, is being expanded to include several thousand more voters in Scotland (taking the Scottish cohort to 5,000) to closely track their voting behaviour and look at how their thinking evolves during the referendum. Though this is not explicit, it will help slice through the banalities and sophistry that party and campaign spin doctors on both sides seem unable to shake off with the referendum campaign.

This may in time raise questions of its own: politicians, however disliked or seemingly mechanical in their behaviour, went to the trouble of being elected, exposed to public judgment and scrutiny. Academics are protected from those tests; their accountability far less open to popular control.

The exciting aspect of this ESRC programme is that this seemingly isolated political event is being examined holistically, with much wider social and political implications. The research is making connections between the Scottish referendum and David Cameron's putative poll on EU membership in 2017, as well as the important elections taking place each year and every May between now and that vote.

So, for all of the above, Scotland's apparently introspective review of its ties to the UK is politically vital for us all.

Whatever the result, this political event will be unique and renew British politics.