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West European Politics, Vol. 32, No. 5, 1031 1048, September 2009 Direct Democracy and its Critics: Support for Direct Democracy and Stealth Democracy in Finland A SA BENGTSSON and MIKKO MATTILA In this article support for direct democracy and for stealth democracy in Finland is analysed. Stealth democracy represents a step towards a democracy in which there would be even less citizen involvement than in the representative form of today s democracy. The authors found that both options gained significant support among the Finnish electorate. Additionally, they found that it is mostly the same variables that contribute to the probability of citizens being supporters of either direct democracy or stealth democracy. It is the people with less education, who do not know much about politics and who feel that the current system does not respond to citizens needs, that want change. The direction of change appears to be a matter of secondary interest. Political ideology affects which of the two options respondents favour. Right-wing citizens are more likely to favour stealth democracy. Citizens leaning to the left are more interested in direct democracy. In recent decades the erosion of citizen support for the representative form of democracy and, in particular, its main actors parties and politicians has raised growing worry among political scientists (e.g. Norris 1999; Dalton 2004). This development has led some reformists to call for new forms of political participation to complement the existing forms of representative democracy. These new forms include various mechanisms of direct citizen involvement in the political process such as referendums or citizen initiatives. In many cases these demands have led to institutional changes that allow for the use of referendums or, in political systems where referendums were already possible, to their more frequent use on both national and sub-national levels (Scarrow 2004). In this article we analyse the support for direct democracy and its alternative, stealth democracy, in Finland. The existing literature on the public support for direct democracy has produced contradictory results concerning the factors that underlie this support. According to one argument it is the citizens with better education and better political knowledge who Correspondence Addresses: asa.bengtsson@abo.fi; mikko.mattila@helsinki.fi ISSN 0140-2382 Print/1743-9655 Online ª 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01402380903065256
1032 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila support increasing citizen involvement in the political process. The other explanation argues that the strongest support for direct democracy can be found among the citizens who are alienated from politics and who distrust politicians, political parties and other political institutions. We tested which of these explanations is more valid in the Finnish case. Furthermore, the problem with existing studies of public support for direct democracy is that they do not normally consider any other options for political change. In addition to questions on direct democracy our analysis includes another measure support for stealth democracy which can be seen as an alternative to direct democracy. Stealth democracy, a term coined by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002), refers to a form of a political system which instead of emphasising direct citizen involvement stresses efficiency, less debate and more widespread use of expert opinions in the political decision-making process. We analyse the extent of support for both of these options among the Finnish electorate and then try to find factors that could explain this support. Support for Direct Democracy A few years ago Dalton et al. (2001: 144) wrote that [p]erhaps ironically, debate over representative versus direct democracy has been largely an elite affair. Consistent with the principles of representative democracy, the public itself has seldom been directly consulted. Although, after 2001, a few studies of public opinion on various forms of direct democracy have been published (most notably Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002; Donovan and Karp 2006; Bowler et al. 2007) the lack of empirical knowledge of citizen support for the changes towards more participatory forms of democracy has resulted in divergent theoretical interpretations and empirical findings. One controversy concerns the interpretation of the popular support for more direct democracy. What does it really mean if citizens indicate that they prefer more direct forms of democracy in survey studies? The first explanation and arguably the more popular one among political scientists is that, in advanced democracies, the growing erosion of popular support for political institutions such as political parties and parliaments has led people to demand for more opportunities to directly engage themselves in the political process. However, there is also another more controversial interpretation offered by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002): people do not really want to be personally more involved in politics. The main reason for many respondents saying in opinion surveys that they prefer more direct democracy is that the survey items generally do not offer enough relevant options to express their desire for political change (ibid.: 88). Hibbing and Theiss-Morse s interpretation is that the first preference of citizens is to make the representative democracy function better, not to have more participatory forms of democracy. Perhaps the most prevalent explanation for the growing disengagement of citizens from politics and the associated support for more direct forms of
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1033 democracy is based on the gradual forces of societal modernisation, including, among other things, increased levels of education and a change from material to post-material priorities in Western democracies (Inglehart 1977, 1997; Welzel 2007). Dalton et al. (2001) refer to this change as the new politics explanation of growing support for direct democracy. New values and the superior skills of people today lead to demands for political change. Social modernisation and post-material values mean that people are increasingly distrustful of hierarchical authority structures such as political parties. At the same time improved education and better access to political information have increased the voters competence at making political decisions themselves without the help of political parties or political elites (Dalton 2007). Thus, the new politics explanation leads us to expect that it is the better educated, politically sophisticated and younger citizens that prefer more direct democracy. The other explanation offered by Dalton et al. (2001: 148) can be called political dissatisfaction hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, voters who feel dissatisfied or frustrated by representative democracy want changes in the existing political system and the demand for direct democracy may be one of these changes. For example, citizens may be disappointed in current political parties which they often may feel are more a part of the state itself rather than a part of a civil society and thus out of touch with the ordinary citizens wishes. Or they may be frustrated with specific policies of their governments and thus want more direct input in the political process. Both of these hypotheses are related to a more general discussion of dissatisfied democrats (Klingemann 1999; Dalton 2004). Empirical research on political support has found that nowadays it is especially well educated and well resourced citizens who are losing their support for political parties, government and other political institutions (Dalton 2004). However, while these citizens may be disappointed in the political process or its outputs they are simultaneously strong supporters of the idea of democracy. Consequently, it is easy to assume that it is particularly these dissatisfied democrats who are strong supporters of more direct citizen involvement in the political process. The existing empirical results are to some extent contradictory. Dalton et al. (2001) found that in Germany the dissatisfaction hypothesis received more support than the new politics hypothesis. It was the less educated, less interested in politics and supporters of protest parties that were more likely to be supporters of direct democracy. However, Donovan and Karp (2006) came to an almost opposite conclusion in their study of six established democracies. According to their results it was the younger citizens and those who were more interested in politics that were the strongest supporters of direct democracy. Political disaffection had a less consistent impact. Finally, Bowler et al. (2007) found that support for referendums was greater among people who were interested in politics, trusted government and were satisfied with how democracy was working.
1034 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila In Finland the support for various mechanisms of direct democracy has not received much attention in studies. This might be related to the relatively sparse use of direct democracy tools in the Finnish context. At the national level, only two consultative referendums have been held. 1 Referendums are, however, more common at the local level, where around 50 consultative referendums have been held since the beginning of the 1990s (Pikkala 2006). 2 In a study from 1998, Gilljam et al. lent some support for what they called a distrusting citizen hypothesis. According to their results, it was voters with low trust in parties and politicians who had the most favourable views on referendums. Furthermore, support for referendums was connected to low political interest and low political knowledge. In a more recent study Paloheimo (2007) came to broadly similar conclusions. Favourable attitudes towards referendums were correlated with low education levels and low levels of political knowledge. Support for Stealth Democracy Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002) present a quite a different and more controversial view of the desire of citizens for a more direct democracy than the previously discussed new politics and dissatisfaction hypotheses. Their claim, based on empirical evidence from the USA, is that people do not really want to be more involved in politics. Instead, they want what Hibbing and Theiss-Morse call stealth democracy. In stealth democracy people do not want to provide much input to those who are assigned to make [political] decisions; and they would rather not know all the details of the decision-making process (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002: 1 2). Supporters of stealth democracy are not undemocratic and they want the democratic procedure to exist but not to be visible on a routine basis. Basically, people want the representative democracy to function better. They want the political decisions to be made by unselfish and knowledgeable politicians. The only reason they might support direct democracy is that they believe that politicians become too much involved in petty politicking, and are too partisan to see the common good and that their decisions are too much influenced by special interests. In stealth democracy citizens do not routinely get involved in politics or actively monitor political decision-makers. The goal of stealth democracy is for decisions to be made efficiently, objectively, and without commotion and disagreement (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002: 143). Thus, supporters of stealth democracy respond positively to such survey statements as Our government would run better if decisions were left up to successful business people and Our government would run better if decisions were left up to non-elected, independent experts rather than politicians or the people. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse s (2002: 145 9) empirical results show that many of the normal demographic background variables such as age, gender, income or education were not related to the desire for stealth democracy.
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1035 Ideology was a statistically significant predictor; conservative citizens were more likely to favour stealth democracy than liberals. In addition, citizens who disliked political conflict and were less interested in politics were more supportive of stealth democracy. To our knowledge the support for stealth democracy is not studied thoroughly in any country other than the US. 3 However, the 2007 Finnish Election Study included some of the survey questions that Hibbing and Theiss-Morse used in their original analysis. Thus, we are able to test whether support for stealth democracy is as strong in a Nordic democracy, which is in many ways different from the US and whether factors affecting the support for stealth democracy differ from those found by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse. Direct democracy and stealth democracy can arguably be seen to represent two different directions when considering changes to the existing representative political system. Direct democracy entails more involvement by ordinary citizens in the political process while stealth democracy means more efficient decision-making with more reliance on expert opinions and less active citizen involvement. Thus, they represent different democratic ideals. Stealth democracy clearly shares some characteristics with the classic Schumpeterian idea of democracy as a competition between elites while demands for more citizen involvement are related to the more recent discussion about participatory and/or deliberative democracy (Pateman 1970; Barber 1984; Elster 1998). Empirical Design This is the first research that analyses these two alternatives simultaneously in a single study outside the US. Thus, it is our aim to map the extent of support for both direct democracy and stealth democracy in Finland and then to ascertain which factors can explain their support. Is it that the better educated and more politically knowledgeable citizens prefer direct democracy while those citizens who feel alienated from politics opt for the stealth democracy option? Or perhaps it is the other way around. We will test for the importance of factors related to the new politics hypothesis that leads us to expect that post-material values are associated with demands for a greater democratic role for citizens in the political process. Research by Dalton et al. (2001) and Inglehart (1977, 1997) emphasises that cognitive mobilisation has led to greater demands for citizens to have access to the democratic decision-making process, which means that citizens with higher education, better political knowledge and more interest in politics should be more likely to be supportive of direct democracy. 4 The second hypothesis is inspired by research that suggests that demands for changes in representative democracy are more likely to come from politically cynical or critical citizens who are losing confidence in representative democracy and conventional modes of political participation.
1036 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila Both of the dependent variables used in this study voters support for direct democracy and stealth democracy are variables consisting of four values. Given that the dependent variables are both ordered categorical variables, ordinal logistic regression will be used as a method of studying the influence of our independent variables. Ordered logistic regression, similar to linear regression, assumes a particular ordering of the responses along a single dimension. It does not, however, impose the assumption that all intervals between the categories are even. The analyses are performed on cross-sectional survey data from the Finnish national post-election study of the parliamentary election held in March 2007. The survey consisted of two stages, including face-to-face interviews with a total of 1,422 respondents and a questionnaire, to be returned by mail, answered by 1,033 respondents. 5 To make comparison of the regression coefficients easier all independent variables entered in the multivariate analyses are coded on a scale from 0 to 1. Dependent Variables Support for direct democracy can be captured using several different measures, and there appears to be no common agreement on the best way to proceed. In the Finnish election study, the question was not about the general opinion on referendums as such, but it was asked in relative terms, that is, if the respondent was in favour of an increased use of referendums when important political decisions are made. Since referendums are rather sparingly used in the Finnish context, a positive response does not necessary imply a wish for a strong direct democracy. It should rather be understood as a wish for more direct influence by the people than is the case today. Our simple operationalisation follows the strategy of several other different studies in the field (Donovan and Karp 2006; Bowler et al. 2007). The variable is an ordinal variable with four different answer categories ranging from strong disagreement with the statement to strong agreement with it. Our measure of support for stealth democracy is based on the work of Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002) and we employed the same questions as well as the same procedure for the operationalisation in order to make our results directly comparable with the US results. 6 As noted by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002: 143), the measure used to gauge support for stealth democracy is far from perfect, but seem[s] to provide a reasonable start. The measure is accordingly comprised of respondents opinions towards four different statements: 7 1. It would be better for the country if MPs stopped talking and concentrated on solving actual problems. 2. Compromise in politics is really selling out one s principles. 3. This country would run better if political decisions were left up to successful business leaders.
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1037 4. This country would run better if political decisions were left up to experts instead of politicians and citizens The four questions are combined in an index with four values, consisting of those respondents giving a positive answer to each of the first two questions and to at least one of the last two. 8 Frequencies of answers to each of the questions will be displayed later, in Table 2. Independent Variables Our explanatory model is designed to test whether voters sociodemographic background, their political resources and their views of the political system affect their opinions towards direct and stealth democracy. In the new politics explanation, post-material values are supposed work side by side with the cognitive aspects and mobilise support for more direct citizen influence. This includes a rather broad palette of factors ranging from political knowledge and interest to demographics and political participation. The political dissatisfaction hypothesis which suggests that demands for changes in representative democracy are more likely to come from politically cynical or critical citizens will be grasped by attitudes towards different aspects of the political system. The demographic characteristics controlled for are age and gender. The sophistication or competence of voters is operationalised using three different measures. The first is the formal competence of the respondent, measured by the level of education, which is an ordinal variable with six values. The second aspect, real political competence, is harder to grasp. In this case, we measured the level of political knowledge by means of five questions about political matters. The questions were designed to measure respondents knowledge about politics from a broad perspective (Gro nlund 2007). The questions were combined in an index, which counts the number of correct answers. 9 The third aspect of competence touches upon the more subjective side of the matter. Internal efficacy is thus a measure of how well the respondent feels that he or she understands what is going on in the political arena (Almond and Verba 1963; Niemi et al. 1991). It is a categorical variable with four possible values. Political mobilisation was captured by two different measures, the level of political interest and if the respondent voted in the previous election. Voters attitudes towards the political system were grasped by four different measures. At the most general level we use a question about satisfaction with democracy (Anderson and Guillory 1997) which is a categorical variable with four values. External efficacy, a measure of voters beliefs about the responsiveness of the political system to the demands of citizens was used to capture attitudes towards the day-to-day workings of the political system (Craig 1979; Niemi 1991). The external efficacy variable is an index consisting of four different categorical variables with four
1038 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila different values each. 10 The third variable that we used was the degree of respondents party identification, also a categorical variable with four values. Finally, the last variable is a measure of the respondents ideological location on the left/right dimension. This is a variable that has values ranging from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right). Empirical Analysis We begin our empirical analyses by presenting descriptive statistics of the extent to which Finnish voters favour changes to the existing form of representative democracy. Do they in general have a positive opinion towards changes and if so, in what direction? We will display frequencies of support for the two alternatives, an extended use of referendums and questions about a less politicised rule, stealth democracy. It is obvious when looking at Table 1 that the Finnish public shows an overwhelming support for direct democracy or, to be more specific, for an extended use of referendums when important political questions are decided. Almost 70 per cent of the respondents are in favour of this statement. 37 per cent state that they strongly agree with an extended use of referendums and 32 per cent that they partly agree. These results are in line with those found in the previous election study in 2003, when the same question was asked. Thus, the Finnish public appears to have a rather stable opinion in favour of a development towards a more direct democratic rule, at least during the new century. 11 From a Nordic perspective it appears as if Finnish attitudes towards the use of referendums are quite positive. Comparable results from Norway and Sweden from 1994 show considerably lower support for an extended use of referendums (Donovan and Karp 2006: 677). Later figures from Sweden also support this pattern (Oscarsson 1999: 23). A broader international comparison does, however, put a different light on the issue. In a study of attitudes towards direct democracy in 16 nations, only the citizens of Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia proved to be less enthusiastic about referendums than the Finns (Bowler et al. 2007: 352). Other Nordic countries were not included in this study. The second development of interest in this study stealth democracy can be described as in many ways the opposite of a development towards TABLE 1 IMPORTANT QUESTIONS SHOULD BE DETERMINED BY REFERENDUMS MORE OFTENTHANTODAY % N Strongly agree 36.7 517 Partly agree 32.2 454 Partly disagree 23.7 334 Strongly disagree 7.3 103 Total 100.0 1408
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1039 increased use of direct democracy. Whereas a more frequent use of referendums puts more political power in the hands of the citizens, a development towards stealth democracy has the opposite consequence. This alternative puts weight on efficient decision-making with power in the hands of unselfish and knowledgeable politicians or experts, and downplays political discussion and the involvement of ordinary citizens in the political process. According to Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002), voters (at least in the USA) in general do not wish to be involved with political decisions on a routine basis, but rather wish to leave political decisions to efficient, objective decision-makers, and interfere only when necessary. As described above, stealth democracy was measured by four different questions, which in the next step were combined in an index. Attitudes towards each of the questions are displayed in Table 2. When interpreting the figures presented in Table 2, it is important to bear in mind some special characteristics of Finnish political culture. It involves a long-lasting tradition of political negotiations and compromises, not least during the periods of surplus majority coalitions, such as the two rainbow coalitions chaired by Prime Minister Lipponen (1995 2003). In the light of these traits of practical political orientation, results concerning the two first questions might come as a surprise. The observation that an overwhelming majority of 83 per cent agreed with the statement that there is too much TABLE 2 STEALTH DEMOCRACY QUESTIONS Politicians should stop talking and take action Compromise is selling out one s principles Leave decisions to successful business people Leave decisions to non-elected experts % N % N % N % N Strongly agree 41.7 426 11.7 119 4.4 34 6.4 66 Partly agree 41.6 424 34.7 354 14.1 144 26.4 270 Partly disagree 12.6 129 38.2 389 35.3 361 27.7 283 Strongly disagree 1.0 10 8.3 84 36.8 376 28.7 293 Don t know 3.1 32 7.1 72 9.4 96 10.8 110 Total 100.0 1021 100.0 1019 100.0 1022 100.0 1022 TABLE 3 SUPPORT FOR STEALTH DEMOCRACY IN FINLAND (%) % N No stealth democratic traits 10.6 86 One stealth democratic trait 30.6 250 Two stealth democratic traits 33.1 270 Three stealth democratic traits 25.7 210 Total 100.0 816 Notes: Positive answers to the two statements leave decisions to successful business people and leave decisions to non-elected experts are the only ones counted.
1040 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila discussion and not enough real decision-making in politics can not be easily dismissed. When confronted with the statement that compromises in politics are selling out ones principles, almost half of the respondents (46 per cent) were in agreement. Interestingly enough, these figures correspond quite well with results from the United States, even though the Finnish public appear slightly more sceptical than the Americans did in 1998 (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002: 136). 12 The two other questions displayed in Table 2 measure support for more non-democratic decision-making structures, such as giving more political power to successful business leaders or non-elected experts instead of politicians or the people. These suggestions clearly involve moving away from popular control and giving less weight to political influence by citizens. From this aspect it can be regarded as the opposite of direct democracy. The idea of putting more political power in the hands of non-elected experts does have greater public support than conceding political decision-making to successful business leaders. A little over 30 per cent are in favour of a more pronounced expert rule, while less than 20 per cent wish to give more power to people with a record of being successful business leaders. Once again the results are relatively similar to those found in the United States. The Finnish public is less enthusiastic about relinquishing power to successful business leaders but slightly more in favour of rule by non-elected experts. 13 Since different variants of the question about giving political power to experts have been asked in several countries 14 it is possible to make some comparisons. When these results are compared to the Swedish ones we find that the Swedes are far more tempted by decisions made by experts. In a study from 1998, as many as 52 per cent of the respondents were positive towards the suggestion that more political decision-making power be given to experts in important questions. Results from the world values survey in 1995, however, provide a different result, which indicates that answers to this question might be strongly influenced by political or economic factors. In 1995, Finland showed the strongest support among western democracies for an extended use of expert rule in political matters. As much as 61 per cent of the Finnish respondents gave a positive response to this question in 1995, a figure that can be compared with 33 per cent in Norway, 34 per cent in USA and 38 per cent in Sweden (http://www.worldvalue ssurvey.org). The four questions about stealth democracy were, as described previously, combined in an index measuring the degree of support for stealth democracy. As can be seen in Table 3, only 11 per cent of the respondents were completely without stealth democratic attitudes. As much as 26 per cent responded positively to at least three of the four questions and 33 per cent had two of the three stealth democracy traits. A careful interpretation of the distribution is that the support for political deliberation (discussion), compromise and political decisions based on direct involvement of the people is less than enthusiastic. It can, once again, be noted that
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1041 TABLE 4 SUPPORT FOR STEALTH AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY (%) Support for direct democracy Strongly disagree Partly disagree Partly agree Strongly agree Total Support for stealth democracy No traits 1.0 5.2 3.2 1.4 10.7 One trait 3.4 10.3 10.1 7.2 31.1 Two traits 1.8 6.5 10.6 14.0 32.9 Three traits 1.7 3.8 6.1 13.6 25.3 Total 8.0 25.8 30.0 36.2 100.0 the distribution corresponds surprisingly well to that found in the United States. We concluded earlier that quite strong support for both a development towards direct democracy as well as a more extended expert rule is to be found among the Finnish public. Since both views appear to enjoy rather widespread public support it is interesting to see how these views are related to each other. The development on the one hand towards stealth democracy and on the other hand towards direct democracy can be regarded as changes in different directions. Nevertheless, the results presented in Table 4, where opinions towards the two ideals have been cross-tabulated, show clearly that they were not understood as such by many of the respondents. As much as 44 per cent of the respondents displayed a positive attitude towards an extended use of referendums and at the same time shared at least two of the stealth democratic traits. This is more than twice as large a share as the group of voters that were neither in favour of a change towards direct democracy, nor shared more than one stealth democratic trait. Even if the development towards stealth democracy and direct democracy can be regarded as moving in different directions, some respondents obviously were in favour of both. This result should perhaps be understood as an expression of disaffection with the existing political system rather than as clearly thought-out opinions towards where the alternative lies. The next step is to analyse what kind of factors explain support for the two options. As we mentioned earlier, there is a debate in research literature on the origin of these attitudes. Is it, as the post-materialists appear to believe, the young, knowledgeable and politically enthusiastic citizens that favour more direct public involvement in politics (Donovan and Karp 2006; Dalton 1984; Inglehart 1997). Even a cursory glance at the results presented in Table 5 gives a clear indication about the direction of the interpretations. Expectations about support for a greater public involvement among the politically interested, resourceful and skilful citizens does not receive any support whatsoever. On the contrary, attitudes in favour of more referendums in the future are negatively connected with such factors as education and knowledge about
1042 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila TABLE 5 EFFECTS ON SUPPORT FOR DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND STEALTH DEMOCRACY, ORDINAL LOGISTIC REGRESSION Direct democracy Stealth democracy B p s.e. B p s.e. Gender (man) 70.22 * 0.12 0.12 0.15 Age/100 70.74 * 0.36 0.60 0.49 Education 70.81 *** 0.22 70.69 * 0.28 Political knowledge 71.35 *** 0.30 71.99 *** 0.38 Internal efficacy 70.04 0.26 0.38 0.34 Political interest 0.17 0.27 70.04 0.33 Voted 70.20 0.20 0.30 0.26 Satisfaction with democracy 70.64 * 0.32 70.60 0.40 External efficacy 72.85 *** 0.41 74.18 *** 0.54 Party identification 70.01 0.25 70.81 ** 0.32 Ideological location (right) 70.86 *** 0.26 0.69 * 0.32 Threshold 0.00 76.78 *** 0.41 75.63 *** 0.51 Threshold 0.33 74.72 *** 0.38 73.57 *** 0.48 Threshold 0.66 73.16 *** 0.36 71.78 ** 0.47-2 Log likelihood 2602.120 1644.200 Cox & Snell R 2 0.193 0.262 Nagelkerke R 2 0.210 0.282 McFadden R 2 0.084 0.115 N 1115 715 ***p 5 0.001, **p 5 0.01, *p 5 0.05, (*p 5 0.10). Notes: Multicollinearity diagnostic statistics show that there is no cause for concern. VIF values for each of the variables included in the different models are below 2.5. All variables entered in the analyses are coded on a scale from 0 to 1. political matters. Interest in politics proves to be of no statistically significant value. Instead, a negative attitude towards the responsiveness of the political system appears to be an important promoter of support for direct democracy. Women are also slightly more in favour of using an increased number of referendums than men. A rather unsurprising result is the negative relationship between party identification and support for stealth democracy. This implies that those who have a clear party preference are not in favour of revisions to the system in a non-democratic spirit. When comparing the results of the two different views of political decision-making, the most striking result is that there appears to be a similar pattern explaining both. The same explanatory variables transpire to have a statistically significant impact on the attitudes towards direct democracy as well as stealth democracy. Education, political knowledge, external efficacy as well as ideological leaning prove to be of importance in both of the analyses performed. Moreover, for three of these factors the patterns are similar. A positive attitude towards a greater use of referendums as well as stealth democracy is correlated with lower levels of education and knowledge of political matters and with a pessimistic view of the responsiveness of the political system (external efficacy). As regards the ideology, we do however, find an interesting difference. A favourable view of
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1043 direct democracy appears to be associated with an ideological leaning towards the left. Stealth democracy conversely is associated with an ideological preference to the right. The finding about the importance of ideological leaning is supported in previous research. Analyses by Donovan and Karp (2006: 681) displays a positive relation between support for direct democracy and left-wing attitudes in several countries and the results by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002: 146) in the United States are in line with the right-wing bias found here of support for stealth democracy. The impact of individual variables in ordinal logistic regression analysis is difficult to directly assess from the regression coefficients. Therefore, we depict the actual impact of four of our independent variables in Figure 1. These variables were selected because they all had a statistically significant impact on both the support for direct democracy and support for stealth democracy. The bars in the figure show the probability of an individual FIGURE 1 IMPACT OF IDEOLOGY, POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE, EXTERNAL EFFICACY AND EDUCATION ON SUPPORT FOR DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND STEALTH DEMOCRACY Note: Lighter bars indicate support for direct democracy and darker bars for stealth democracy.
1044 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila respondent being a strong supporter of either direct democracy or stealth democracy in different categories of the independent variables. We define the respondents who answered strongly agree to the statement about extended use of referendums as strong supporters of direct democracy. Strong support for stealth democracy refers to respondents who displayed three stealth democratic traits in our index variable (i.e. maximum amount). The lighter bars indicate the probability of a respondent being a strong supporter of direct democracy and the darker bars indicate the likelihood of being a strong supporter of stealth democracy. The predicted probabilities are calculated from the results in Table 5. Other independent variables were set to their mean values when the probabilities were calculated. The upper left-hand panel in Figure 1 shows the effect of ideology on the support of both direct and stealth democracy. The support for direct democracy decreases when moving from left- to right-wing respondents. An opposite effect can be found when looking at the support for stealth democracy. Respondents positioning themselves ideologically to the right are more likely to support stealth democracy than those with more left-wing ideological affiliation. The upper right-hand panel shows the effect of political knowledge. Support for both direct democracy and stealth democracy decreases with rising levels of knowledge. The support for direct democracy is greater than support for stealth democracy in all categories of political knowledge. Furthermore, the difference between direct democracy and stealth democracy supporters is greatest among the most knowledgeable respondents. Among those with low political knowledge stealth democracy gathers almost as much support as direct democracy. Education (lower right-hand panel) has a similar pattern to political knowledge: increased levels of education mean lower support for both direct and stealth democracy. External efficacy, that is, voters overall belief in the responsiveness of the political system, has the strongest impact on support probabilities (lower left-hand panel). Almost 60 per cent of citizens who feel that the political system lacks responsiveness are strong supporters of both direct and stealth democracy. At the other end of the scale, citizens who are happy with the responsiveness of the system rarely yearn for more direct democracy and even less for stealth democracy. To summarise, it is clear that it is not the well-educated politically knowledgeable citizens who want change in the existing form of representative democracy in Finland. They seem to be mostly happy with the status quo. People with less education, with less political knowledge and those who feel that the political system does not respond to their needs, want changes to the existing political system. The hypothesis about postmaterial values among the knowledgeable and politically enthusiastic as the promoters behind the rise in popular support for direct democracy is, thus, not supported by our analysis.
Stealth Democracy in Finland 1045 Conclusions In this article we aimed to analyse simultaneously the extent of support on the one hand for more direct forms of democracy and on the other hand for more stealth democracy which would be a step towards a democracy in which there would be even less citizen involvement than in the existing representative form of today s democracy. Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that both options gained significant support among the Finnish electorate. The next goal was to study what factors affect citizens support for direct democracy or stealth democracy. Interestingly, we found that it is mostly the same variables that contribute to the probability of citizens being supporters of either more direct democracy or stealth democracy. Generally, our results give support to the political disaffection hypothesis. It is the people who feel that the current system does not respond to citizens needs that want change. In addition, citizens with less education and who do not know much about politics are stronger supporters of change. The direction of change appears to be a matter of secondary interest. However, there is one interesting difference between supporters of stealth democracy and direct democracy. It is the political ideology that affects which of the two options respondents favour. Right-wing citizens are more likely to favour efficient decisionmaking by independent non-elected experts in the form of stealth democracy. Citizens leaning to the left are more interested in direct democracy. They want more options for the ordinary citizen to become involved in the political decision-making process. The new politics explanation does not seem to be supported by the opinions of the Finnish electorate. Citizens with the characteristics that we usually associate with post-material values, such as being more highly educated, having a higher level of political knowledge or interest in politics, seem to be quite happy with the existing situation. Most of them do not want change in either of the two directions tested in this article. However, one must be careful not to draw too far-reaching conclusions from this analysis. It seems that many people hold opinions that are somewhat inconsistent. They prefer simultaneously both more direct democracy and more stealth democracy. Although perhaps not logically mutually exclusive, our two options clearly represent different forms of democratic ideals. One option stresses direct citizen involvement while the other puts emphasis on efficiency and expert decision-making. Thus, it seems that many citizens want change to the existing situation but they do not necessarily have well thought-out options for the direction this change should take. This also means that the researchers concerned with public support for referendums or other means of increasing citizen involvement in politics should be careful when drawing conclusions from their data. It may often be the case that when people respond positively to questions about referendums they might be merely advocating any change in the political
1046 A. Bengtsson and M. Mattila system and it does not necessarily mean that they would be interested in referendums as such. Notes 1. The two national referendums were held in 1931 and 1994. In 1931, people voted for the abolition of the Prohibition Act, and in 1994 for membership of the European Union. 2. Consultative referendums at the municipality level were introduced by law in 1990. 3. However, some of the questions included in the concept of stealth democracy, as described by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002), have been studied in other environments. See, for example, Oscarsson (1999). 4. Due to the lack of good measures for post-materialist values, it is unfortunately not possible to control for this aspect in the model. We therefore choose to focus on the cognitive mobilisation aspect of the new politics explanation. This strategy is in line with previous studies (Dalton 2001; Donovan and Karp 2006; Bowler et al. 2007). 5. The survey includes an oversample of Swedish-speaking respondents. We controlled for this by using appropriate weights. 6. We explicitly choose to present the results for the operationalisation used by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse for reasons of comparability. We have, however, run analyses with an alternative index with three different statements as well (1. This country would run better if political decisions were left up to successful business leaders. 2. This country would run better if political decisions were left up to experts instead of politicians and citizens. 3. The Finnish government would work better if it was run as a company, Cronbach s alpha 0.79). The interpretation of the results for this index corresponded well to the ones we present in our analyses below. 7. It should be noted that the formulation of the questions deviates slightly from the ones used by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse due to translation. The content of the questions does, however, correspond with the original questions. 8. The index is thus not a simple summative index of the four questions. Instead it is a variable that is created in two steps. In the first step the responses to each of the four questions are recoded into variables consisting of two values, positive (1) and negative answers (0). In the next step answers to the four statements are added so that the last two statements only are ones counted. This provides us with an index with four values where zero (0) indicates disagreement with all of the four statements and three (3) that the respondent agrees with the first two statements and with at least one of the two latter. Cronbach s alpha for the simplified variables included in the index is 0.49. The internal consistency of the four original variables (consisting of four values each) is however higher (Crohbach s alpha ¼ 0.66). 9. The questions are as follows: 1. Who (of the following) was the Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs during 2006? 2. What party (of the following) is the second largest party in the new parliament measured in terms of mandates? 3. What country (of following) is a member of the United Nations Security Council? 4. Who is entitled to vote in Finnish parliamentary elections? (Four alternatives were offered). 5. What is meant by a parliamentary form of government? (Four alternatives were offered). 10. The questions used in the index are as follows: 1. MPs are becoming out of touch with ordinary people. 2. Politicians don t care about what ordinary people think. 3. Parties are only interested in people s votes, not their opinions. 4. It doesn t matter who is in power, politics won t change any way. Cronbach s alpha ¼ 0.75. 11. However, if we look at results from the European Referendum study from 1994, it can be seen that public opinion appears to have become more positive towards the increased use of referendums during the past decade. In 1994, 45 per cent stated that referendums should be held more frequently, 49 per cent that they should be used sparingly and 5 per cent that they should never be held (Donovan and Karp 2006: 677, 686). Comparability between this
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