Midcentury Modern: The Emergence of Stakeholders in Democratic Practice

Since the 1960s, “the stakeholder,” or affected party, has emerged as a novel democratic subject whose participation in varied institutional sites—from universities to government agencies, corporate boardrooms to international organizations—is seen as necessary for the management of complex problems. However, few specifically attend to the stakeholder as a distinct political subject and consider its implications for democratic practice. This paper presents a genealogy of the stakeholder, documenting its appearance in corporate managerialism and US public administration and showing how racial mobilization, rapid technological progress, and the political rationality of systems thinking provided the conditions of possibility for its emergence. Though orienting democracy around stakeholders permits opportunities for participation in political life, I argue that this subject is predicated on a circumscribed form of participatory politics that erodes habits of discovering a common good, erases distinctions between individuals and corporate bodies, and amplifies the problem of expertise.

Tocqueville’s Politics of Grandeur

In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however, that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville championed a version of grandeur tied to the latent energies of the lower classes and distinct from the Bonapartism and aristocratic nostalgia that characterized his thoughts on empire. This version of grandeur was a political reclamation of disagreement and debate that supported great party opposition to counter the malaise of bourgeois rule. The essay concludes by comparing Tocqueville’s attitude toward foreign others, whose freedoms had to be sacrificed to the cause of French nationalism, with his description of the lower classes within his own nation, whose inclusion in the franchise could foster great politics. This comparison enables us to draw modest lessons for interpreting political grandeur in the present day.

Creating Regulatory Harmony: The Participatory Politics of OECD Chemical Testing Standards in the Making

In recent decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become a powerful forum for trade liberalization and regulatory harmonization. OECD members have worked to reconcile divergent national regulatory approaches, applying a single framework across sovereign states, in effect determining whose knowledge-making practices would guide regulatory action throughout the industrialized world. Focusing on US regulators, industry associations, and environmental groups, this article explores the participatory politics of OECD chemical regulation harmonization in the late 1970s to early 1980s. These efforts were conditioned by differential institutional access and resources among stakeholders who sought to shape regulatory knowledge rules. Facing competing European and US approaches to chemical data—a minimum “base set” of test data versus case-by-case determinations—OECD members chose the European approach in 1980. However, US regulatory politics shifted with the election of President Reagan, prompting industry associations to lobby the US government to block the agreement. Examining the micropolitics of these standards in the making, I demonstrate that while long-term structures advantaged industrial actors, ideological alignment with the US government precipitated their decisive influence. The case illustrates the importance of attending to the distinctive politics of international harmonization and the effects on transnational knowledge-making and regulatory intervention.

‘Elf Lives Matter’? The racial dynamics of participatory politics in a predominantly White fandom

Declining rates of political participation in the West have led to increasing scholarly interest in the potential for participatory culture to re-engage marginalised citizens. Media fandom has, in particular, been hailed as a gateway to a new era of ‘participatory politics’. However, the implications of a politics founded on popular culture within a racially segmented media landscape is under-researched. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dragon Age fandom on Tumblr, this article analyses how the racial dynamics of a predominantly White fandom impact upon participatory politics, taking as a case study the analogy fans made between elves and real-world racial minority groups. It argues for the dangers of founding political action upon predominantly White content worlds, with non-White fans disproportionately burdened with the task of contesting implicit racial hegemonies. Without this work, however, there is the risk that a participatory politics based on White content worlds will perpetuate racial injustice.

Metamorphic Moment of the Indian Polity: Anatomizing the Evolution and Changing Dynamics of the Indian State against the Protean Nature of Cooperative Federalism

The elusive and paradoxical nature of Indian polity has been evident in the amalgamation of Western patterns of bureaucratic organization, participatory politics with indigenous practices and institutional framework that had an organic growth on the Indian soil. While post-colonial India was characterized by the incorporation of democratic political ethos and structural architecture, Westminster model of parliamentary government and representative legal institutions, it did not imply the exact replication of the British architectonic system of advanced industrial democracy. As the Indian political process is subjected to dramatic transmutations and cyclical changes, it has eventually acquired a mass character and vibrancy with the exuberant participation of marginalized and underprivileged political formations and social groups in the political arena, coupled with the regionalization of the polity, altering the terms of political domination and sowing the seeds of an increasingly complex mechanism of negotiation, competitive bargaining, alliance and coalition-building, in a cooperative federalist arrangement. The principle objective of this paper is to put an emphasis on the role of the Indian state, the transformation of Indian federalism and the political process, while holistically encapsulating the development and multidimensional patterns associated with the Indian political system, tracing the departure from the heyday of the Congress system and Nehruvian civic nationalism to the crystallization of a majoritarian edifice, propelled by Hindu Nationalism.

Consumer movements, brand activism, and the participatory politics of media: A conversation

This is a scripted adaptation of a conversational podcast interview between Henry Jenkins and Robert Kozinets about contemporary consumer activism and its relationship to media studies. After the interview, the conversants agreed to develop the transcript of the conversation in order to be more relevant to a scholarly audience who are interested in how Jenkins’ ideas apply to the understanding and investigation of consumer culture today. The conversation frames and synthesizes a range of thinking around activism, fan studies, brand management, and consumer culture theory. Couched in the American context but containing themes that may also relate to global culture in the current moment, it covers the theoretical as well as the pragmatic concerns of many of the stakeholders in the world of contemporary consumer activism, from the activists themselves to the brand managers who respond to their actions to the creators who write the stories that inspire them both. Topics include the relevance of participatory culture today, anti-racism and the role of media, consumer conflicts with brands and the corporations who police them, the importance of civic imagination to civic engagement, differences between brand managers and story creators, consumer activism in the workplace, activist and participatory approaches to civic research, the nature of contemporary consumer activist movements, the impact of intersectionality, and the prefigurative possibilities for change today.

Digital Youth Politics

The authors examine the debate over youth engagement as it has developed since 1990, especially the role of digital and social media. Despite panics over youth disengagement and the pervasiveness of the youth deficit model, contemporary research largely finds that young people are politically engaged, that new media facilitate youth engagement, and that new media usage tends to reduce inequalities between youth in political engagement. Beyond these general findings, the authors also examine how youth use digital and social media in the development of political knowledge and interest and when participating in campaigns and elections, social movements and protest, political consumption (e.g., boycotts and buycotts), and participatory politics (i.e., traditional and new forms of engagement such as making cultural interventions and circulating information and opinions). For each form of engagement, the authors also assess the role of digital and social media usage in making engagement more inclusive and equitable. The authors close by introducing evidence-based resources that young people have access to online to aid their engagement and thoughts about future research.