Political and policy decisions are often presented as neutral choices. Yet, seemingly neutral and widely accepted views are ideologically embedded in a vision on how society should look and what role citizens have to play. These ideologies, we argue, remain silent. In this special issue, we discuss the value and risks of silent ideologies. While silent ideologies may be functional in some cases, there are also risks. The various contributions show that there is a risk of criticism, new ideas and innovative solutions being removed from the political debate. Also, silent ideologies may conceal conflicting interests of citizens and the state, which may exclude the ‘irresponsible’ citizen from the public domain. We argue that public officials and civil servants should take up a role in addressing silent ideologies and their workings.

Over the past decade, policy attention for ‘active citizenship’ and ‘bottom up’ citizen initiatives has strongly increased. Nowadays, governments tend to approach citizens more and more as practical ‘doers’: as active citizens that can initiate projects in the public domain – for instance to increase the livability of their neighborhood. The dominant policy perspective on what is called the ‘democracy of action’ is one of a small government (to make room for a ‘big society’) that is not directive but supportive to active citizens.
In this article, we first argue that in practice we observe two ‘silent ideologies’ that suppress this policy perspective of the democracy of action. We call these the silent ideologies of ‘professional centralism’ and of ‘instrumental support’; we claim that in practice these ideologies enable the dominance of professionals over citizen initiatives (and nót that of the citizens). Second we state that the policy perspective of the democracy of action itself contains a silent ideology: it assumes a highly depoliticized form of citizenship. In the short term, this may be convenient for administrators and policy makers but in the long run this can lead to a less democracy because the voices of critical citizens are not heard.

This paper critically reflects on in the idea of ‘silent’ (or concealed) ideologies in society. Its central thesis is that ideologies – in a wider sense: faith and ideals – not only have a negative side, but may also have positive impact on the political and social order. Public safety initiatives serve as examples to support my claim.

This article analyzes the political discourse of alliance or partnership thinking. The metaphore of a partnership suggests a government which stands alongside civilians embodying a humble and service-based policy-making. We claim that this metaphore is in fact a justification for an interventionist claim towards those who not subscribe to the pact. The ideal of partnership is based on the political mimesis, a political conception which denies the principled distinction between state and society. The identification of a popular and political will is the legitimation of partnership thinking. It creates a problematic distinction between those who are supposed responsible and those who are not. To oppose governmental policy making leads to a high political price: either you’re with us, or against us.

Values like quality of life, efficiency of services, solidarity in finances and privacy of clients are being compromised continuously in daily practices, inspired by opinions and ideology of (groups of) individuals. Yet, systems like healthcare are dominated by technocratic procedures to enforce transparency and efficiency. This functional rationality pushes away the more fundamental debates on values. This doesn’t mean they are not being compromised, but it’s done in a hidden way. It’s the nurse taking decisions on the amount of time available for a patient. Although restricted by procedures nurses compromise differently. The same counts for healthcare executives in their boardrooms. Restricted by system requirements they take decisions differently, inspired by their convictions. It is all ‘hidden ideology’ in institutions, interactions and intuitions. Even the political arena is imprisoned by the self made technocratic way of debating and deciding on important societal issues. Political debates should be about the values behind procedures instead of technocratic in its essence. Critical checks and balances have to be reinstalled (or reanimated) in political decision making in order to do this and meet patients’ or citizens’ needs, instead of maintaining a procedural attitude that drives politics and ideology away from society.

The information revolution, and in particular the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive technology, creates a new societal arena: biopolitics. This so-called NBIC-convergence strengthens the promise that live, including our bodies (e.g. genes), brains (e.g. attention) and social environment (e.g. social contacts and consumer behaviour), can be brought into the domain of technological manipulability. NBIC-convergence, therefore, raises many social and ethical issues. The dominant naïve belief in progress through technology often stands in the way of a timely and adequate governance of these issues. The current situation in which the information revolution is mainly developing on the political sidelines, can lead to thorny societal and political problems in the mid and long-term.

Because of the blurring of the European internal borders, combating crime is demanding closer cross-border collaboration between police forces. For that reason, the Dutch police have expressed the objective that dealing with cases with an international component should be an integral part of the job for every police officer. This study focuses on the attitudes of Dutch police officers regarding cross-border policing, and seeks to determine which factors have the greatest effect on those attitudes. This attitude approach contrasts with more traditional, top-down approaches, by shifting the focus to micro dynamics on the individual level. The methods chosen for addressing this research objective consist of semi-structured interviews and observations. The results show that the current attitude of Dutch police officers is mainly determined by the extent to which they have had to deal with international issues in their daily work. Although strong organization-wide attitudes towards cross-border policing are not likely to arise, much could still be gained by facilitating cross-border experiences and making more coherent efforts at socialization.