Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Midcentury Modern: The Emergence of Stakeholders in Democratic Practice

Abraham, Kavi Joseph

Midcentury Modern: The Emergence of Stakeholders in Democratic Practice Thumbnail


Authors



Abstract

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.

Citation

Abraham, K. J. (2022). Midcentury Modern: The Emergence of Stakeholders in Democratic Practice. American Political Science Review, 116(2), 631-644. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055421001106

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Sep 29, 2021
Publication Date 2022-05
Deposit Date Oct 5, 2021
Publicly Available Date Oct 5, 2021
Journal American Political Science Review
Print ISSN 0003-0554
Electronic ISSN 1537-5943
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 116
Issue 2
Pages 631-644
DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055421001106

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version) (249 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance Online Version This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association.




You might also like



Downloadable Citations