Discussion
The starting-point for this paper was the problem of the democratic deficit and its
attendant consequences, most notably a decline in the level of public trust in politics
and a growing sense of citizen alienation from the political process. The stakeholder
concept is integral to many proposed solutions to the problem and, superficially at
least, the notion of stakeholding appears to have been adopted by numerous politicians
in leading democracies. However, definitional vagueness represents a threat to the
utility of stakeholder theory in this regard. If there is no consensus on who exactly
constitutes a stakeholder, then on what basis are those consulted on particular issues to
be selected? The potential for political expediency to triumph over procedural justice is
apparent. An existing theory developed in the field of management – the theory of
stakeholder identification and salience (Mitchell et al., 1997) – has proposed the three
variables of power, legitimacy and urgency as key to understanding which
stakeholders possess the most salience to managers. We applied this framework in a
political context.
Our first research question investigated the use of the term “stakeholder” by
politicians and the meanings attached to it. Unequivocally, we found that the notion of
stakeholding is in widespread use in politics and that it refers, in principle, to those
with a legitimate interest or claim in a particular situation or policy decision. Hence, in
terms of stakeholder identification, legitimacy is the most important of the three
variables of TSIS (Mitchell et al., 1997) in a political context. However, a very different
picture emerges in relation to our second and third research questions which were
concerned with salience rather than identification. It appears there are many groups
with legitimate interests who are effectively excluded from the consultative process
because they are largely unorganised and hence lack the power to command the
attention of the political elite. In practice, politicians and their advisers pay most