Who is willing to participate? Dissatisfied democrats, stealth democrats and populists in the United Kingdom
2013/03/27 by Paul Webb · 227 citations
Social Sciences · #Democracy #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Law #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Referendum #Social Media and Politics #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12021
published in European Journal of Political Research 52(6), 747-772 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2013/03/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract
Abstract This article demonstrates that two quite distinctive types of political disaffection – ‘dissatisfied democratic’ and ‘stealth democratic’ – exist among British citizens, with the former being more prevalent. While both types manifest low trust in political elites, the dissatisfied democrat is politically interested, efficacious and desires greater political participation, while the contrary is generally true of the stealth democrat. However, stealth democrats are favourably disposed towards direct democracy, which can be attributed to the populist nature of stealth democratic attitudes. Even so, when given the opportunity to take part in a national referendum, neither stealth democrats nor dissatisfied democrats showed much inclination to vote.
Cited by
- Conceptualizing and Measuring Citizens’ Preferences for Democracy: Taking Stock of Three Decades of Research in a Fragmented Field
- Personal or Impersonal Evaluations? Political Sophistication and Citizen Conceptions of the Democratic Process
- Changing Democracy? Why Inertia is Winning Over Innovation
- Understanding and Challenging Populist Negativity towards Politics: The Perspectives of British Citizens
- Defending the Status Quo or Seeking Change? Electoral Outcomes, Affective Polarization, and Support for Referendums
- Participation, Representation and Expertise: Citizen Preferences for Political Decision-Making Processes
- Process Preferences and British Public Opinion: Citizens' Judgements about Government in an Era of Anti-politics
- Technocratic attitudes: a citizens’ perspective of expert decision-making
- The will for reason: voter demand for experts in office
- Public Support for Expert Decision-Making: Evidence from Finland
- Enraged, Engaged, or Both? A Study of the Determinants of Support for Consultative vs. Binding Mini-Publics
- Sortition, its advocates and its critics: An empirical analysis of citizens’ and MPs’ support for random selection as a democratic reform proposal
- The devil is in the detail: What do citizens mean when they support stealth or participatory democracy?
- People or Experts? A Study on Public Preferences for Participatory Democracy and Expert Governance in the Context of Climate Policymaking in Sweden
- Voting with dissatisfaction: an analysis of the 2019 parliamentary election in Tunisia
- Analysing policy actors’ preferences for different modes of governing in local government
- Decision‐makers, advisers or educable subjects? Policymakers' perceptions of citizen participation in a Nordic democracy
- The dissatisfied and the engaged: citizen support for citizens’ assemblies and their willingness to participate
- Cultural backlash Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism
- Lessons from the Criticality of the Spanish High Capacity Road Network on Direct, Representative Democracies and Technocracies. [europepmc]
- Conflict or choice? The differential effects of elite incivility and ideological polarization on political support. [europepmc]
- Who is afraid of emergency politics? Public opinion on European crisis management during Covid-19 [europepmc]
Related