Stealth Democracy Research Articles

Challenging Democracy: Understanding How the Ideas of Populists and Disenchanted Citizens Align

This thematic issue proceeds from the idea that, despite extensive research, we do not know enough about the alternatives to representative party democracy that people disenchanted with democracy and populists envision apart from greater citizen involvement. Citizens’ potential preferences seem to range from stealth democracy and decision-making by apolitical experts to deliberative mechanisms and referenda. The picture is equally blurred when it comes to the views of populist actors themselves. Research suggests that their calls for referendums diminish over time and that they reject deliberative bodies outright. This thematic issue reassesses our understanding of the extent to which populists’ and citizens’ ideas and the alternatives they propose coincide and argues for a wider dissemination of relevant research that explores these shortcomings. The articles presented explore these points by featuring conceptually and/or methodologically innovative contributions that address issues such as the mismatch between populists and citizens in terms of democratic alternatives, (dis)satisfaction with populist parties in public office, the preferences of distinct subgroups as well as the role of political emotions among populist party supporters.

Workplace democracy and democratic legitimacy in Europe

This study investigates the political spillover and stealth democracy hypotheses as complementary mechanisms to account for any relationship between workplace democracy and democratic legitimacy in Europe from micro (employee-level) and macro (country-level) perspectives. The results from the micro-level analyses reveal that neither workplace democracy nor self-reported membership in trade unions has any direct impact on democratic legitimacy; rather, past union membership produces a negative impact. However, the effect of workplace democracy on democratic legitimacy becomes salient only when mediated by job satisfaction and political interest. On the other hand, the macro-level analysis demonstrates that union density, a measure of workplace democracy at the country level, plays a significant role in explaining democratic legitimacy. The relevance of union density may indicate that employees wish to keep democratic institutions in check by recruiting into the trade unions and applying legal and mobilizational pressure on the mainstream political institutions.

Are Stealth Democrats Really Committed to Democracy? Process Preferences Revisited

Scholarship on “stealth democracy” finds that many citizens want to avoid the debate and conflict that often come with democratic governance. This scholarship has argued that citizens adopt this posture because they are uncomfortable with disagreement and desire a more expedient political process that enables leaders to make decisions without discussion or compromise. We revisit this argument in light of recent political developments that suggest another reason why citizens may desire a more expedient political process. We examine the possibility that some citizens are not merely uncomfortable with disagreement but also want leaders who will aggressively protect them and champion their interests. Using a nationally representative survey, we ask citizens about their preferences for stealth democracy. We also ask questions that tap into their willingness to support leaders who would “bend the rules for supporters” and take aggressive action against political opponents. We find that a substantial component of the electorate continues to prefer a stealth version of democracy. However, we also find that many “stealth democrats” are willing to support leadership practices that would threaten or even undermine democratic norms. We argue that this evidence indicates that, in recent years, many citizens who appear to desire “stealth democracy” pose a threat to democracy itself.

Distrusting democrats: A panel study into the effects of structurally low and declining political trust on citizens’ support for democratic reform

AbstractFor decades, scholars have argued that low and declining political trust affect citizens’ support for democratic and undemocratic reform. While some theorized that low political trust induces alienation and support for non‐democratic decision making, others argued that it pushes critical citizens to support reforms aimed to reinvigorate democracy. Yet, empirical tests of these expectations remained sparse and inconclusive. This paper employs panel data from the Netherlands (covering 3 waves in 3 years) to test these diverging theories simultaneously. We employ the random effects within‐between (REWB) model to differentiate between the effects of structurally low and declining political trust. Our results suggest that low and declining trust both diminish support for representative democracy, enhance support for direct democratic decision making and do not affect support for authoritarianism. These findings cast doubt on the understanding of political distrust as a determinant of political alienation. Rather, they support theories of critical citizenship and stealth democracy.

누가 공론화에 참여할 의향이 있는가?

The public deliberation is emerging as a solution to social conflicts over policy issues in Korea. This study notes that the actual participation of citizens depends on the individual’s willingness to participate, and analyzes the factors that determine participation in public deliberation. In particular, we explore how citizens’ attitudes toward democracy (stealth democracy vs. sunshine democracy) affect their willingness to participate. As a result of the analysis, it is confirmed that individuals in Korea generally decide to participate in public deliberation based on a sunshine attitude rather than a stealth attitude, but that there is also a considerable mix of critical participation that can be viewed as a stealth attitude. This suggests that when designing public deliberation, it is necessary to secure the independence of public deliberation to secure the function of checks and criticism, which are the interests of citizens with stealth attitudes, and to satisfy the preferences of citizens with sunshine attitudes by securing the effectiveness of public deliberation results.

Political Spillover or Stealth Democracy: Workplace Democracy and Democratic Legitimacy

Political Spillover or Stealth Democracy: Workplace Democracy and Democratic Legitimacy

Political participation profiles

The literature on the participation paradox, stealth democracy, political transformation and populism implicitly refers to the existence of different participation profiles, but its empirical evidence focuses on separate actions. While several studies have examined the existence of distinct combinations of actions, such participation profiles have rarely been placed within a theoretical framework or connected to the motivations and resources that shape participation. In this article these connections are given a theoretical basis and empirically tested via latent class analysis of a unique set of 12 different political activities. After establishing the participation profiles, it is assessed how political motivations (e.g. interest, efficacy) and resources (time and skills) explain profile membership by using fractional multinomial logistic regression models. Combining these two steps helps to reassess what levels of political participation actually imply for the functioning of our democracies. Crucially, the participation elite is small; faithful voters are numerous but not particularly engaged; and systemically dissatisfied citizens tend to disengage – only a few try to transform the system. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.2017612 .

The effects of dehumanizing language on public opinion toward federal and “for-profit” immigrant detention

ABSTRACT Both the “for-profit” nature and dehumanizing conditions of immigration detention centers has ignited an intense public debate on the use of immigration detention centers. Although prior research indicates that the framing of public policies can significantly shape public opinion, it is unclear how the “for-profit” nature of immigration detention centers, and the use of dehumanizing language, shapes public support for these facilities. This study employs a survey experiment testing the role of various dehumanizing frames on public support for “for-profit” immigration detention as well as the difference in support when detention centers are owned and operated by the federal government. The results show that the public appears more opposed to “for-profit” detention relative to public facilities. Opposition to the privatization of detention is associated with negative beliefs about big business and a desire for stealth democracy. We further show that support for “for-profit” detention centers increases in the face of dehumanizing language toward immigrants, but only among respondents exhibiting racial prejudice toward Latinos.

When do You Want It? Determinants of Future-Oriented Political Thinking

Many studies have examined whether citizens prefer direct or stealth democracy, or participatory democratic processes. This study adds to the emerging literature that instead examines the temporal aspect of citizens’ process preferences. We use a survey with a probabilistic sample of the Finnish voting-age population (n = 1,906), which includes a measure of the extent to which citizens think democratic decision-making should maximize welfare today or ensure future well-being. Calling this dimension of democratic process preferences future-oriented political thinking, we demonstrate that people hold different but consistent views regarding the extent to which democratic politics should balance between present and future benefits. We find that future-oriented political thinking is linked to general time orientation, but the linkage varies across respondent groups. Politically sophisticated individuals are less future-oriented, suggesting that intense cognitive engagement with politics is linked with a focus on present-day politics rather than political investment in the future.

Same Problems, Different Solutions: Stealth Democracy and the Vote for a Populist Party

In this study, we explore heterogeneity in the relationship between dissatisfaction with democratic representation and voting for a populist party. More specifically, we argue that numerous citizens are dissatisfied with modern political elites and processes, but that not all are attracted by populist parties' programmatic appeal. In particular, while citizens with stealth democratic attitudes are also dissatisfied with democratic representation – similar to citizens with populist ideas – voters with high levels of stealth democracy hold preferences for alternative forms of representation other than those proposed by populist parties. Hence, although stealth democrats are similar to populists on the attitudinal level, they will not be appealed to vote for a populist party. Analyses using the data of the Finnish Election Studies provide support for our hypotheses.

From consumers to energy citizens: Finns’ readiness for demand response and prosumerism in energy policy making

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test the effects of citizens’ support for two rival and opposing conceptions of political involvement, political consumerism and stealth democracy, on their attitudes about demand response (flexible consumption) and prosumerism (self-production) in the context of making of Finnish energy policy. Stealth democracy represents an established view on the role of citizens in energy policy making: the energy sector has traditionally been presented as a technocratic domain reserved for experts and businessmen. By contrast, political consumerism can be seen as an expression of “energy democracy”.Design/methodology/approachThe data is based on a postal survey and an internet survey that were conducted in 2016 among a random sample representing Finns who were between 18 and 75 years. The dependence of the support for demand response and prosumerism on the endorsement of political consumerism and stealth democracy will be tested statistically (Pearson chi-square).FindingsThe endorsement of demand response mainly depended statistically on citizens’ attitudes towards political consumerism and stealth democracy. However, comparing electricity prices and changing electricity suppliers did not depend on adherence to political consumerism and stealth democracy. Nevertheless, in these cases, support was higher among the supporters of political consumerism than among supporters of stealth democracy. By contrast, the endorsement of prosumerism, for instance, in terms of factors that influence citizens’ decisions to invest in electricity generation in their households, depended statistically on citizens’ attitudes on political consumerism and stealth democracy.Research limitations/implicationsIt might be that the variables used in this study to measure stealth democracy are not specific enough. More generally, Finns’ willingness to support for stealth democracy may be based on or at least encouraged by the misunderstandings of democratic politics: more information is needed on the level of knowledge that citizens have about normative principles of democratic decision-making processes.Practical implicationsThe implication of this study for energy policy making is that there are (at least in Finland) good preconditions for developing a decentralized energy system: citizens are ready to adopt a more active role as energy citizens in terms of demand response and prosumerism – irrespective of their attitudes on macro-level attitudes on governmental institutions. Democratization of the energy system could strengthen the legitimacy of energy policy making.Social implicationsCitizens’ attitudes indicate that their potential for involvement needs to be strengthened in the spirit of energy democracy: the idea of energy democracy needs to be seen in terms of the demand for increased accountability and democratization of the energy sector that was previously not seen as requiring public involvement and was most often depoliticized and dominated by technocrats. However, strengthening energy democracy through demand response and prosumerism is not without its problems: utilization of these devices requires a relatively large amount of resources which depend on the individuals’ socio-economic position. Thus, energy democracy cannot replace but complement electoral participation as a form of energy policy involvement.Originality/valueThe contribution of this study is to fill a part of the research gap linking to ongoing energy transitions. As a socio-technical transition can take place only if citizens support and participate in it, we need to better understand citizens’ attitudes on energy consumption and production and energy policy involvement. Citizens’ attitudes on energy production and consumption are becoming more and more critical for managing the energy sector as a result of that the share of wind power and solar power is increasing in the energy system. In a decentralized energy system, citizens have to be prepared to change their modes of operation. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the originality of this study is to test the impact of citizens’ political attitudes on the endorsement of demand response and prosumerism.

Love at first sight? Populist attitudes and support for direct democracy

Do citizens who strongly exhibit populist attitudes support direct democracy? Existing studies tend to claim that populists support direct democracy because of their stealth-democratic orientation or argue that stealth democrats want direct democracy due to the populist nature of stealth-democratic attitudes. Yet, albeit both populists and stealth democrats reject elite rule, they prefer direct democracy for different reasons. Populists support direct democracy as a means to implement the volonté générale, whereas stealth democrats view it as holding politicians accountable for ineffective policy solutions. Our analysis of representative survey data in four European democracies (France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) reveals that individuals with stronger populist attitudes indeed support direct democracy more than citizens with no strong populist attitudes. This effect is observed when controlling for stealth-democratic orientations and when using a measure separating the feature populism shares with stealth democracy – anti-elitism – from the one unique to populism, people-centrism.

The Expert Cure? Exploring the Restorative Potential of Expertise for Public Satisfaction With Parties

The declining legitimacy of political parties has become something of a truism in political science discourse. Less often reflected upon is how these legitimacy problems could potentially be resolved. This article contributes to this underexplored issue by examining the restorative potential of expertise as a supplement to intra-party democracy. Building on an established literature on Stealth Democracy, we explore the potential for expert-inspired reforms to boost citizens’ satisfaction with parties. Using original survey questions, we provide evidence that a perceived lack of expert engagement in parties predicts citizen dissatisfaction, before using deliberative workshop data to distil traits that define the appeal of experts and expertise. This mixed-methods approach allows us to demonstrate some common desires of which parties should be aware, but also traits that make these ideas difficult to realise. Combining these insights, we argue that while expertise has appeal, parties face considerable challenges in satisfying citizens’ desires.

Moving in stealth: On the tracking shot as a technique for imperceptibility

This article explores recent uses of the tracking shot in various media. Examples drawn from television, video games and video art reveal that recent audiovisual media have frequently used a particular kind of tracking shot that follows an individual through a complex environment. This article argues that this tracking shot contributes to an aesthetic of stealth, that is, a perceptual attunement to notions of imperceptibility and secrecy. The stealth tracking shot can thus be seen as one of the aesthetic principles that articulate discourses of securitisation. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, the article shows that this specific use of the tracking shot takes inspiration from third-person video games. An analysis of the stealth game Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013) shows how the mobile ‘following camera’ allows the viewer to perceive the avatar in his or her environment. Then, in an analysis of the unbroken tracking shot in True Detective (2014), it is demonstrated how this kind of tracking shot contributes to a reformulation of the notions of law enforcement underlying crime fiction. Specifically, the tracking shot is related to the notion of stealth democracy. Finally, the article considers Hito Steyerl’s video ‘Guards’ to show that the aesthetic principles of stealth operate not only in individual media objects but more generally in public spaces and institutions such as museums and art galleries. To conclude, the article situates the stealth tracking shot in a more general consideration of the politicality of media aesthetics.

Explaining Support for Stealth Democracy

ABSTRACTThe pioneering work of Hibbing and Theiss-Morse [2002. Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work. New York: Cambridge University Press] on citizens’ process preferences, and particularly support for “stealth democracy” as an alternative to both direct and representative democracy, has recently garnered increased attention from scholars. This paper examines the influence of perceptions of public consensus about controversial issues and of fellow citizens’ competence in making policy determinations on support for stealth democracy. Those who believe there is consensus in the public, and who believe the typical citizen is not competent to make policy decisions, should be more likely to support stealth democracy than direct or representative democracy. To test this, I use data from a statewide survey in Pennsylvania. The results suggest that attitudes on public consensus, but not on citizen competence, explain support for stealth democracy. However, a belief in public consensus also explains support for direct democracy. The factor that distinguishes support for stealth and direct democracy is ideology.

Stealth Democracy: Authoritarianism and Democratic Deliberation

In Stealth Democracy, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse seek to show that much of the American public desires “stealth democracy”--a democracy run like a business with little deliberation or public input. The authors maintain that stealth democracy beliefs are largely reasonable preferences, and the public does not want and would react negatively to a more deliberative democracy. This paper introduces an opposing “authoritarian stealth democrats thesis” that suggests that stealth democracy beliefs may be driven by authoritarianism and a variety of related orientations including poor political perspective taking and low cognitive engagement. These orientations may be ameliorated through democratic deliberation. Hypotheses are tested with survey and experimental data from deliberations with a RDD sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents and of 99 Canadian young adults. Using confirmatory factor analysis and OLS regression with cluster-robust standard errors, the paper finds that authoritarianism and related orientations strongly explain stealth democracy beliefs among deliberation participants and that deliberation significantly reduces stealth democracy beliefs and factors behind these beliefs.

The personality of stealth democrats: how traits shape attitudes towards expert-based governments

While some scholars call for mechanisms to give citizens a greater voice in politics, others critically question the demand for more citizen participation. Rather, they find that the people do not want to be involved in politics and prefer independent experts to make political decisions. This perspective is captured by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse in their concept of stealth democracy. They describe stealth democrats as people who think that political debates are unnecessary or who naturally avoid all sorts of conflict. Especially the latter argument points to a potential psychological underpinning of stealth attitudes, which forms the starting point of the investigation here. This article evaluates the personality of stealth democrats and makes use of a well-known concept to capture personality traits, the ‘Big Five’ model. Analysing unique survey data from Switzerland, the results reveal significant relationships between personality traits such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism and stealth attitudes.

The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: Evidence from a population‐based survey experiment in four West European countries

AbstractThe study of subjective democratic legitimacy from a citizens’ perspective has become an important strand of research in political science. Echoing the well‐known distinction between ‘input‐oriented’ and ‘output‐oriented’ legitimacy, the scientific debate on this topic has coined two opposed views. Some scholars find that citizens have a strong and intrinsic preference for meaningful participation in collective decision making. But others argue, to the contrary, that citizens prefer ‘stealth democracy’ because they care mainly about the substance of decisions, but much less about the procedures leading to them. In this article, citizens’ preferences regarding democratic governance are explored, focusing on their evaluations of a public policy according to criteria related to various legitimacy dimensions, as well as on the (tense) relationship among them. Data from a population‐based conjoint experiment conducted in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is used. By analysing 5,000 respondents’ preferences for different governance arrangements, which were randomly varied with respect to their input, throughput and output quality as well as their scope of authority, light is shed on the relative importance of different aspects of democratic governance. It is found, first, that output evaluations are the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement; second, consistent positive effects of criteria of input and throughput legitimacy that operate largely independent of output evaluations can be discerned; and third, democratic input, but not democratic throughput, is considered somewhat more important when a governance body holds a high level of formal authority. These findings run counter to a central tenet of the ‘stealth democracy’ argument. While they indeed suggest that political actors and institutions can gain legitimacy primarily through the provision of ‘good output’, citizens’ demand for input and throughput do not seem to be conditioned by the quality of output as advocates of stealth democratic theory suggest. Democratic input and throughput remain important secondary features of democratic governance.

Exploring the Relationship between Trust in Government and Citizen Participation

ABSTRACTTheories of deliberative and stealth democracy offer different predictions on the relationship between trust in government and citizen participation. To help resolve the contradictory predictions, this study used the World Values Survey to examine the influence of trust in government on citizen participation. Regression analyses yielded mixed results. As deliberative democracy theory predicts, the findings showed that people who trust governmental institutions are more likely to vote and sign a petition. However, the data provided limited support for stealth democracy in that trust in government negatively affects the frequency of attending a demonstration.

Citizens’ support for rival modes of political involvement in energy policy-making. The case of Finland in 2007-2016

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to test citizens’ attitudes on political involvement in energy policy-making that has generally seen to be dominated by experts and business interests and been relatively closed to citizen involvement. The study asks whether citizens are willing to participate politically more through political consumerism (i.e., consumption choices) or through representative democracy and if citizens are willing to assign decision-making to the experts representing public administration and business, as stealth democracy asserts.Design/methodology/approachMethodologically, the study is based on postal surveys conducted in 2007 and 2016 among a random sample representing Finns who were 18-75 years of age.FindingsPolitical consumerism and stealth democracy were not considered as alternative and detached modes for electoral participation but rather as complementary. However, adherence to stealth democracy was a reaction of people who feel powerlessness in the face of the regime, while the supporters of political consumerism had a higher trust in their ability to influence.Originality/valueThe study is the first one which empirically compares citizens’ support for these three modes of involvement, and it generates new knowledge for the scholars and decision-makers when planning citizen role in (energy) policy-making.