Quiet Politics in Tumultuous Times: Business Power, Populism, and Democracy*

• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329220985725
• Author: Pepper D. Culpepper
• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Subject Matter: Special Issue Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329220985725

Politics & Society

2021, Vol. 49(1) 133 –143

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329220985725

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Special Issue Article

Quiet Politics in Tumultuous

Times: Business Power,

Populism, and Democracy*

Pepper D. Culpepper

University of Oxford

Abstract

This article comments on a special issue of Politics & Society that examines “quiet

politics” and the power of business in an era of “noisy politics.” The scholarship

brought together in the issue shows that the world of business has indeed changed

in the decade since Quiet Politics and Business Power was published, but also that quiet

politics as a mode of low-salience interest advocacy seems alive and well. Building

on this research, the article analyzes the different ways in which the rise of populist,

noisy politics challenges business, how it challenges scholars studying business power,

and how it challenges the functioning of the central feedback mechanism connecting

political elites to mass publics in democracies—the media.

Keywords

quiet politics, democracy, business power, populism

Corresponding Author:

Pepper D. Culpepper, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK.

Email: pepper.culpepper@bsg.ox.ac.uk

*This is one of six articles that constitute a special issue titled “Quiet Politics and the Power of Business:

New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics.” Some of the articles in the issue were first presented

at the SASE annual meeting at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in June 2017, organized by

Glenn Morgan, Christoph Houman Ellersgaard, Stéphanie Ginalski, and Christian Lyhne Ibsen, and at

a workshop at the University of Bristol funded by the School of Management and the Political Studies

Association section on Labour Movements in June 2018, organized by Glenn Morgan, Christian Lyhne

Ibsen, and Magnus Feldmann.

985725PASXXX10.1177/0032329220985725Politics & SocietyCulpepper

research-article2020