Manipulative democracy: leadership and heresthetics in the era of identity-politics, polarization and “post-truth” conditions

Since classical elite theory, and especially since Schumpeter's (1987) thesis, the manipulation of public opinion by political leaders and elite discourse has been widely regarded as one of the main risks of the democratic political process. Theoretically, the problem has been raised in the social choice literature, notably by Riker (1982; 1996), who introduced the concept of heresthetics as a paradigm of manipulation. In empirical research, the Michigan School was the first to address the problem of voters' ability to form coherent opinions (Berelson 1952), then cognitive and behavioural science as well as political communication research (Entman 1993) investigated it through framing experiments (Chong and Druckman 2007). In addition, framing theory has developed at the intersection of sociology, cognitive and behavioural science, philosophy of language and discourse theory (Goffman 1974; Howarth 1995; Lakoff 2011). This paper follows the Rikerian tradition and considers the concept of framing as applied in experimental research as an empirical counterpart to Rikerian heresthetics (1983; 1986). Heresthetics and framing are seen as tools for strategically manipulating the political discourse, the agenda, the understanding of key issues and the political situation (Körösényi et al. 2022). This paper applies the Rikerian paradigm to provide an empirically informed theoretical account of new developments in contemporary politics, such as identity politics (Mason 2018; Iyengar et al. 2018), growing partisan polarisation (McCoy et al. 2018; Patkós 2023), and the rise of 'post-truth' conditions (Kalpokas 2019). In light of these contemporary empirical developments, this paper focuses on the problem of manipulation of public opinion by political leaders. It poses two research questions. First, how do post-truth conditions, identity politics and the emergence of partisan polarisation affect leaders' room for manoeuvre? The paper argues that post-truth conditions increase leaders' room for manoeuvre, while identity politics and partisan polarisation are more of a constraint in the short term, but further increase the room for manipulation in the longer term. The second question is how these trends affect the functioning of electoral competition and democratic accountability. The paper argues that the excessive rise of identity politics, partisan polarisation and post-truth conditions turn the democratic political process into a game of manipulation and undermine the accountability of elected leaders. The contribution of this paper to the field is threefold. First, by applying Riker's concept of heresthetics, it bridges the gap between theoretical and empirical research, which are usually unrelated. Second, it unpacks how the empirical trends in contemporary politics analysed have confirmed the role of leaders in setting the agenda, shaping public opinion and citizens' preferences. Third, it shows how the cumulative effect of heightened identity politics, increasing partisan polarisation and the prevalence of 'post-truth' conditions is undermining the normative capacities of democracy.