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

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.