Abstract
In theory, participatory democracies are thought to empower citizens in local decision-making processes. However, in practice, community voice is rarely representative, and even in cases of equal representation, citizens are often disempowered through bureaucratic processes. Drawing on the case of a firearm discharge debate from a rural county’s municipal meetings in Virginia, I extend research about how power operates in participatory settings. Partisan political ideology fueled the debate amongst constituents in expected ways, wherein citizens engaged collectivist and individualist frames to sway the county municipal board (Celinska 2007). However, it was a third frame that ultimately explains the ordinance’s repeal: the bureaucratic frame, an ideological orientation to participatory processes that defers decision-making to disembodied abstract rules and procedures. This frame derives its power from its depoliticization potential, allowing bureaucrats to evade contentious political debates. Whoever is best able to wield this frame not only depoliticizes the debate to gain rationalized legitimacy but can do so in such a way to favor a partisan agenda. This study advances gun research and participatory democracy research by analyzing how the bureaucratic frame, which veils partisanship, offers an alternative political possibility for elected officials, community leaders, and citizens to adjudicate partisan debates.
Introduction
There is a long line of research analyzing participatory democratic practices and processes in the United States (Bellah, Madsen, and Sullivan 2007; Mansbridge 1983; Polletta 2012; Putnam 2001; Tocqueville and Bowen 1898). Participation in the democratic process is thought to empower citizens through contributions to local decision-making practices, ultimately enhancing the larger democratic project (Lee, McQuarrie, and Walker 2015; Levine 2017; Mansbridge 1983; Tocqueville and Bowen 1898). Of late, scholars have debated the extent to which democratic processes yield democratic results and have paid close attention to how power operates in these settings. Cases of participatory democracy in action have found that these processes do not holistically represent the communities in which civic debates are adjudicated (Einstein et al. 2019) and even in instances in which citizens’ voices are equally represented, citizens are often disempowered through bureaucratic procedures (Cheng 2020; Levine 2017).
Using a case study of a firearm discharge debate from a rural county’s municipal meetings in Virginia, I extend research about how power operates in participatory democracies by clarifying how discursive frames influence decision-making processes in such settings. 1 This particular case study is valuable because it comes with a set of expectations. The debated social issue—guns—is highly politically polarized and the county demographics match typical gun advocates, who tend to be ideologically driven and politically active (Cook and Goss 2014; Igielnik and Brown 2017; Lacombe 2019; Lacombe, Howat, and Rothschild 2019; Melzer 2012). Given this, expectations would proceed as follows: (1) partisan ideology would frame the debate and (2) an ideologically driven group of gun advocates would control the process and outcome of the firearm debate through overrepresentation.
I find that ideological partisanship did fuel the ordinance debate in expected ways, given that the county is rural, Republican, and predominantly white and that attitudes toward guns are mired in deeply polarized cultural traditions (Braman and Kahan 2001; Celinska 2007). Additionally, I find the debate outcome favored vocal, overrepresented anti-ordinance constituents’ position: a repeal of all firearm discharge ordinances. However, partisan ideological frames were not used by officials to justify the ordinance repeal and therefore cannot fully explain the process. In this article, I analyze how a confounding framework, the bureaucratic frame, instead explains local action. 2
Partisan ideological frameworks—collectivist and individualist (Celinska 2007)—were central to the debate process for constituents. Collectivist frames are an ideological commitment to “sharing resources with others and relying on the government,” whereas individualist frames “emphasize utilitarian individualism and self-reliance” (Celinska 2007:229). I argue that such ideological frames orient social actors to participatory processes, coordinating how constituents and leaders approach and understand democratic practices.
The bureaucratic frame, however, prevailed as the guiding rationale for the board’s decision-making, becoming ascendant when introduced by the county sheriff, a social actor with legal-rational authority. The bureaucratic frame is an ideological orientation to participatory processes, which decenters constituents’ and politicians’ identities and values, instead emphasizing disembodied abstract rules and procedures. This is a powerful depoliticization framework in participatory processes. Whoever is best able to wield the bureaucratic frame can not only depoliticize debates to gain rational legitimacy but can also do so in such a way that can conceal a partisan agenda by deflecting decision-making responsibility to abstract structures. 3 Depoliticization, however, does not mean apolitical. It means that once-salient ideologies and frameworks (collectivist and individualist) are neutralized by the bureaucratic frame, which operates as a partisan veil. 4 The bureaucratic frame offers citizens, community leaders, and elected officials an alternative political possibility, under the guise of neutrality and rational legitimacy, with which to negotiate politically contentious social issues. While the bureaucratic frame is itself influential in decision-making processes, it intersects with structures of authority in these institutional spheres, giving the frame ascendancy when introduced by a social actor who maintains legal-rational authority.
This research makes important contributions to participatory democracy research and emergent gun literatures. First, this article contributes to gun research by explaining how politically dichotomous national gun debates are negotiated in and through local political processes, underscoring how the political binary is not always exhaustive in explaining the gun debate. Second, this research extends knowledge of how participatory democracies work in action by introducing the bureaucratic frame as another method by which officials evade “public-spirited” debates, with significant implications for other partisan social issues beyond the gun debate (Eliasoph 1996:269). 5
Theoretical Background
Participatory Democracy Research
In theory, participatory processes are thought to empower citizens by facilitating voice and representation in decision-making processes, all of which uphold democratic ideals. However, scholars have documented how participatory democracies do not live up to these ideals in practice, with specific attention to voice and representation, the contours of power, and how groups negotiate politically tense conditions in such settings (Brown-Saracino and Stiman 2017; Einstein et al. 2019; Lee et al. 2015; Levine 2017; Mansbridge 1983; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995).
First, scholars attend to voice and representation within the community process itself. Democratic processes are thought to empower citizens by giving them voice in decision-making (Einstein et al. 2019; Lee et al. 2015; Levine 2017; Mansbridge 1983; Tocqueville and Bowen 1898). However, scholars have debated the extent to which including citizens’ voices in democratic processes yields democratic results, paying close attention to how political power operates in participatory settings. Community meetings are often attended only by a select few privileged constituents (Einstein et al. 2019), and even if attended by representative community bodies, the dynamics of decision-making in meetings often elevate only some privileged voices over others (Mansbridge 1983).
Second, participatory democracy research analyzes how and through whom power operates in political processes. Even in instances when community members are equally represented in community meetings, bureaucratic processes disempower dissident voices, particularly for disadvantaged communities (Levine 2017). Rather than empowering citizens, deference to community voice and opinion has become a bureaucratic checkmark for civic and political leaders, creating the illusion of power for citizens while still maintaining power for elites (Levine 2017; see also Lee et al. 2015). Put simply, it is not just voice and representation of constituents that matters most. An analysis of the dynamics between citizens and bureaucrats, and the authority bureaucrats exercise over constituents in these contexts, clarifies how decision-making power operates and through whom.
Finally, analyses have revealed how people negotiate politically tense situations across a range of civic and political spheres, finding that people prefer to avoid more politically tense situations and issues altogether (Eliasoph 1996, 1998; Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003). This is not simply because citizens themselves uniformly dislike political, or “public-spirited” debates, but because the structure of some institutions undermine these very civic processes (Eliasoph 1996:269; Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003). I draw upon Eliasoph and Lichterman (2010) who argue that researchers cannot “[assume] some issues or groups are inherently more political than others,” researchers must instead “[examine] how and where, if at all, people acting in concert make things political…researchers have to take a prior step to ask how people, groups, or institutions politicize or depoliticize issues or people” (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2010:483). This suggests that it is important to attend not just to the outcomes of politically contentious debates, but to the meaning-making process in which these debates are negotiated.
Existing research underscores the value of looking at how legislative decisions are made, with particular attention to representation and voice, how debates are framed, and the interactional dynamics of political discourse. I extend this research by delineating how bureaucracy operates as an ideological frame that orients contentious community debates and guides patterns of action in participatory democratic settings.
Firearms in Society
Research on guns in society is emergent and covers a wide array of subfields within sociology and beyond, with scholars across public health, criminology and law, rural sociology, and cultural sociology analyzing attitudes, values, orientations, and behaviors of gun owners, as well as the causes and consequences of related firearms policies. 6
Research across these areas finds that conservative, white, rural men are more likely to own guns and oppose firearm legislation than any other social group (Igielnik and Brown 2017; Mencken and Froese 2019; Thompson and Stidham 2010). As a result, cultural analyses about identities, behaviors, orientations, and attitudes often center on this ideologically driven group, finding a complex interplay between masculinity, whiteness, and both socio-economic privilege and decline in explaining the decision to carry firearms and support its legislation (Carlson 2015; Melzer 2012; Stroud 2016). Recent research even finds that gun ownership is itself a social identity, with political partisanship predicting one’s identification with this category and powerful actors, such as the NRA and charismatic leaders, shaping one’s understanding of guns as a social issue, political issue, and social identity (Lacombe 2019; Lacombe et al. 2019). This complex identity formation furthermore penetrates attitudes, identities, and political orientations of law enforcement officials. While stewards of public safety, they are more likely than not to be members of the NRA and often aim to support measures to protect gun rights among constituents (Thompson et al. 2011; Woldoff, Litchfield, and Matthews 2017).
Partisan ideology also permeates political processes and opinions of firearm legislation. Opposing cultural traditions, such as egalitarian or solidaristic (Braman and Kahan 2001) and individualist and collectivist (Celinska 2007), explain opposition to or support for gun laws. These broader ideological frameworks help explain how people orient their identities and actions to social issues, like the gun debate, beyond individual-level characteristics. Such ideological divides are deeply embedded and enduring cultural and legal traditions, and can “provide insight into the intractability of the gun debate” (Carlson 2020:189). 7
I extend this research by analyzing how firearm legislation is enacted at the local political level. Important work has emerged in this area, with attention to how gun laws are rendered through state processes (Carlson 2017), which materialize against the backdrop of public opinion, political ideology, and elections (Steidley 2018). I build on this research by examining how local legislative bodies negotiate firearm law at the intersection of politics, ideology, and identity. Attending to such processes explains how everyday actors negotiate polarized national debates in civic and political settings. This also clarifies how and the degree to which this process is driven by partisan ideology and identities.
A set of expectations emerges from extant research about how partisan identities and ideologies might influence a political process in a rural county in Virginia. Because residents in this county mirror the typical firearm advocate and these advocates tend to have the loudest voices in advocacy and strongest political mobilization techniques (Lacombe 2019; Melzer 2012), it might be expected that a conservative, Republican-leaning ideological orientation would explain both the process and outcome of the ordinance debate from beginning to end. Political partisanship is likely to be central to a community debate about guns, a politically polarized social issue deeply embedded in American cultural tradition (Braman and Kahan 2001; Celinska 2007). However, attention to this case of participatory democracy in action reveals a more complex process.
The Spirit of Bureaucracy
An analysis of the gun debate within a participatory democratic setting necessitates a discussion of bureaucracy, a guiding institutional logic of this social sphere (Lounsbury 2001; Friedland and Alford 1991; Knutsen 2012). In modern industrial society, bureaucratic systems governed by abstract rules and procedures have prevailed as legitimate forms of power (Weber 1978). Decisions in bureaucracies are “arrived at ‘without regard to persons…’ [and] universalism and calculation in reference to enacted regulations stand here strictly opposed to decision-making in reference to the personal qualities of the individuals concerned (Kalberg 1994:24). Decisions in participatory democratic institutions are not made in a political vacuum but intersect with structures of legal-rational power, subjected to the “spirit of bureaucracy” (Kalberg 1994:24; Page et al. 2005).
Legal-rational authority, or the claims to legitimacy based on the belief in abstract rules and procedures, is characteristic of bureaucratic settings (Weber 1978). This type of authority grants opinions of specific social actors in participatory settings more legitimacy than others because such actors are assumed to orient their “actions, dispositions, and commands” to an “impersonal order” (Weber 1978:217). Given this, bureaucracy influences both the social actors and ideological frameworks that are deemed legitimate to bureaucrats.
Social actors also influence bureaucratic institutions. This is because institutions are “inhabited;” they are “not inert cultural logics or representations; they are populated by people whose social interactions suffuse institutions with force and local meaning” (Hallett and Ventresca 2006:226). Actors in bureaucratic settings are people with identities, values, and ideologies who have distinct orientations to gun legislation and identity. Such values and dispositions intersect with and influence structures of rational authority and legitimacy.
Attention to a municipal ordinance debate must attend to the institutional setting in addition to politics and participation (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2010). In this instance, bureaucracy, and the modes of rational authority embedded within it, is not just the backdrop for these debates. Bureaucracy is a tool and ideological frame, a “spirit” (Weber 1978:225) that operates in conjunction with politics to be employed by constituents, elected officials, and law enforcement officials.
The Case
The County, an Overview 8
County Demographic Change 2000 to 2010.
All data come from US census 2000 and 2010.
a2010 estimates come from 2006 to 2009 ACS 5-year estimates.
Voting Characteristics of the County 2004, 2008, and 2012.
All data come from Virginia.gov election results.
The county is a particularly appropriate location for a case study of firearm legislation. Gun owners and advocates are typically rural, white males, which matches the demographic makeup of the county. Moreover, the political demographics of the county lean heavily toward Republican, both in its constituents and in its elected officials. Given these demographic conditions, it would be expected that constituents and elected officials would be more likely to own guns and oppose firearm legislation (Igielnik and Brown 2017). These conditions provide a set of expectations for the process and outcome of the ordinance debate: partisan ideology would weigh heavily in the decision-making process.
Virginia is made up of two types of municipal bodies, independent cities and counties, both of which have their own independent political structures. Towns are subsumed into county governments. Political decision-making occurs at the county level through the election of the Board of Supervisors, a governing body representative of election districts in each county. In the county studied, the board is comprised of five elected citizens, one from each election district, serving the district for 4 years. The Board of Supervisors has the authority to enact county zoning, codes, and ordinances. For the past few years, the Board of Supervisors has been almost exclusively made up of Republican members.
While in many states, preemption prohibits lower levels of government from enacting or enforcing stricter laws to regulate firearms and ammunition, many states, even those with preemption laws, still allow local governments to regulate the discharge of firearms within their municipalities (Cook and Goss 2014). 9 Virginia is one such state.
The County: The History of Firearm Discharge Regulations
Since 1975, the Board of Supervisors regulated firearm discharge on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, depending on the neighborhood’s density and the danger of discharging a firearm in heavily populated areas. In 1989, the Board of Supervisors allowed named neighborhoods to petition to be added to the restricted firearm discharge list. 10 This form of discharge regulation persisted without question until 2008, at which time 49 named subdivisions were listed as restricted areas. During 2008, an incident next to an elementary school, in which a hunter discharged a firearm near school grounds, caused the school division and the county to revisit local laws with the intention of prohibiting firearm discharge within 1,000 feet from county schools. At that time, the board also asked other neighborhoods if they would like to be added to the restricted areas list.
The proposed ordinance changes were debated until May 2009, when the board held a public hearing about expanding the current firearm discharge ordinance to include the 1,000-foot prohibition near county schools and adding more neighborhoods to the no-discharge restriction list. During the public comment segment of the meeting, various citizens opposed the ordinance, citing its infringement on Second Amendment rights. The county sheriff, who was asked to provide expertise, also opposed the ordinance, citing its redundancy to state law. The meeting in 2009 was originally intended to discuss the expansion of the firearm ordinance but evolved into a broader debate about the fundamental legal and social merits of the ordinance. In July, the board held two more public meetings, the last of which ended in a complete repeal of all firearm discharge restrictions, including in the neighborhoods previously deemed unsafe for discharge. It is the task of this analysis to explain how the decision-making unfolded throughout the meeting process.
Methodology
This article is based on a qualitative content analysis of three document types: Board of Supervisors meeting minutes and agendas that led up to and covered the firearm ordinance debate (2008 to 2010), Board of Supervisors memoranda (written by the county administrator from 2008 to 2010) based on the Board of Supervisors meeting minutes and the board’s consensus in closed meetings, and newspaper articles in The Press (a local newspaper) covering the ordinance debate.11
Using open coding, I first inductively coded the documents looking for emerging themes and patterns from the Board of Supervisors, the public, and county law enforcement. Important themes emerged from this original coding regarding the frames used to justify either the expansion or repeal of the ordinance: bureaucratic redundancy, deference to community and public safety, deference to experts and authority, individual rights and liberty, and crime prevention. I then used focused coding to categorize each comment for the above themes while also coding for the speaker’s gender, social status (e.g., board member, law enforcement official, or the general public), and ordinance position. From this coding, I uncovered a temporal pattern of the frames used to debate the ordinance and a pattern of the frames used to debate the ordinance between the public, law enforcement official, and board members. After memoing and returning to extant literature, I placed these frames within three broader ideological frameworks: collectivist, individualist, and bureaucratic.
There are important limitations to using meeting minutes as a source of data. Written minutes are unable to capture the tone of the speaker, the reaction of the audience, or the precise language of the speaker, all of which are important for gaining a deeper sense of the meeting process (Sandler and Thedvall 2017). Meeting minutes are also unable to capture community actions outside of meetings, which are an important source of data for understanding community decision-making (Brown-Saracino and Stiman 2017). There are likely important processes that happened outside of the meeting itself which might explain the motives, actions, and ideologies of the social actors. Given this, I emphasize that this analysis can explain how discursive frames influence decision-making processes within the delimited sphere of the meeting itself. Meeting minutes are also influenced by the subjectivity of the meeting scribe, which can obscure, or otherwise misrepresent, the speakers’ intended meanings. However, it is possible to deduce from the paraphrased minutes the general frames used by each speaker to justify their position in the ordinance debate, serving as an important resource for understanding the broad content of participation in civic settings (Einstein et al. 2019). While not without limitations, meeting minutes are an important source of data to analyze and partially recreate historical events (Small 2004). This type of research can shed light on a time and place where a researcher was not in attendance, which can aid in future analyses of similar events.
Findings
Representation
At its core, community political meetings and the decisions made therein are largely dependent on who attends the meetings, publicly comments, and whose voices are valued in the process (Brown-Saracino and Stiman 2017; Einstein et al. 2019; Levine 2017; Mansbridge 1983). This section examines the demographic breakdown of those who spoke on record during the meetings. All five board members were on record, and in the final two meetings, the board invited the county sheriff to speak as an expert on the matter. Data from meeting minutes confirm the expectation that white, rural, Republican-leaning men, who are more likely to own firearms and oppose restrictive legislation than any other group, were overrepresented and voiced anti-ordinance opinions during the meeting process (Einstein et al. 2019; Igielnik and Brown 2017).
Throughout three public hearings on the firearms discharge ordinance, there were 36 total public comments. Of the 36 comments, there were 26 distinct individuals who spoke (there were a few citizens who attended and spoke at each meeting). Of these distinct individuals, three were women and 23 were men. Four were in favor of expanding the ordinance, while 22 were in favor of its repeal.
Public Hearing Comments by Ordinance Position, Gender, and Median Home Value.
aMedian home value only calculated for county residents.
Subdivision Representation by District.
Representation of Subdivisions With Previous Discharge Restrictions.
In total, only four out of the 39 neighborhoods, roughly 10 percent, that previously opted into more stringent firearm regulations were represented at the meetings. Twelve out of the eighteen comments at the meetings came from individuals outside of these subdivisions, and those who were opposed to the ordinance and in favor of its repeal were much more likely to be from neighborhoods without any prior firearm restrictions.
Mirroring existing research on community meetings, the public hearings were hardly representative of the community at large, which is a recurrent issue with the democratic process (Einstein et al. 2019; Lee et al. 2015; Mansbridge 1983). This is evident through both the prevalence of non-county opinions expressed, as well as a dearth of representation from an entire administrative district altogether. Furthermore, there was a large gender imbalance at the public hearings which is particularly important because women are both more likely than men to support firearm legislation and have difficulties attending community meetings because of childcare responsibilities (Igielnik and Brown 2017; Mansbridge 1983). 13 While there was not equal representation from the community, the representation of people and opinions in the meeting confirms empirical expectations: men were overrepresented and the most vocal citizens maintained anti-ordinance opinions (Einstein et al. 2019; Lacombe et al. 2019; Melzer 2012). With this foundation, I turn to the content of the public’s arguments or the frames used by those who publicly voiced their opinions.
Hearing Comments
Competing Ideological Frames in Participatory Settings.
To debate firearm discharge regulations, the public used binary codes associated with collectivism and individualism to affirm their respective positions. Both frames are broad ideological orientations to decision-making in participatory democratic processes or a guiding interpretation of how lawmakers should adjudicate political debates. 15 Collectivist frames “emphasize sharing resources with others and relying on the government” (Celinska 2007:229). This frame was deployed by constituents in favor of the ordinance expansion in a number of ways. These citizens made appeals to public safety, collective consensus, and more government intervention, all in an effort to convince board members to expand firearm regulations. Other constituents relied on an individualist frame, which “emphasize[s] utilitarian individualism and self-reliance” (Celinska 2007:229). These constituents argued in favor of the individual right to own and discharge a firearm and the right to use private property. However, an alternative frame emerged when the county sheriff, a social actor designated with legal-rational authority, was asked to provide expert opinion: the bureaucratic frame, which emphasizes abstract rules and procedures “without regard to persons” (Kalberg 1994:24). This frame was deployed to argue that a county-level firearm ordinance is bureaucratically redundant to state laws. Thereafter, the anti-ordinance public and board members relied on this frame.
In what follows, I use collectivist, individualist, and bureaucratic frames to analyze the arguments made by the constituents, Board of Supervisors, and the sheriff to understand how discursive frames influence decision-making processes in participatory settings, generally, and how the gun debate is rendered through local politics, specifically. I first begin with the general public who favored the ordinance expansion.
Collectivist frame: Ordinance expansion
Community members who commented in favor of the ordinance expansion argued that institutions should uphold ideals of collectivism and rely on government intervention to do so. The specific arguments manifested as arguments for public safety and collective consensus to influence political decision-making. For instance, meeting minutes from the July 20th meeting state: “Mr. Smith appeared to speak in opposition to the repeal of the ordinance. He asked the Board to take politics out of this decision and continue to make the community a safe place to live. He suggested that making the entire county a no-discharge county would remove the boundaries making enforcement easier for the Sheriff’s deputies.”
Mr. Smith’s collectivist frame was expressed through arguments about community and public safety, which should supersede political affiliation. Similarly, Mr. Johnson relied on concerns about the general publics’ welfare, frames of collectivism, to counter arguments made about individualism as a democratic ideal: “Mr. Johnson addressed the Board in opposition to the repeal of the firearms ordinance. He spoke of the 13 total precincts in [the] County, stating if this provision were repealed from the County Code, all precincts would be treated identically for the purposes of public safety. He expressed disagreement with [the sheriff] that Title 18.2 of the Criminal Code of Virginia was not appropriate to maintain all public safety issues. He stated he felt the current County code provided the Board with the flexibility needed to treat safety issues in each district individually. He stated this ordinance was not about the right to bear arms, but the discharge of firearms. He suggested the County establish and operate a public firing range for citizens.”
Mr. Johnson argued that the issue at hand was not an issue of the Second Amendment—the right to bear arms—but about the broader safety of the general public. While few individuals throughout these hearings who made public statements supported the ordinance expansion, all who did relied on the collectivist frame to justify their position. That is, the general publics’ welfare and safety is a goal for which the county should strive, supporting government intervention to ensure this goal.
Individualist frame: Ordinance repeal
Those who commented in favor of the firearm ordinance repeal relied on an individualist frame to justify and convince the board of their position. Those in favor of the repeal argued broadly about various individual rights and liberties upon which the ordinance might infringe. The ultimate goal and outcome of this frame was to politicize the ordinance in favor of individualist ideals in an effort to repeal all firearm regulations. The excerpts from the meeting minutes below capture the ideology embedded in this particular frame: Mr. Robertson appeared before the Board to speak in opposition to the firearms ordinance, stating it was overbroad and would infringe upon the rights of many of the citizens. Mr. Peters appeared to speak in opposition to the firearms ordinance, stating it was an infringement of his constitutional rights. Mr. Jackson spoke in opposition to Ordinance 09-8. He asked to Board to strike Section 16–37 from the ordinance to preserve the rights of property owners in [the] County. Mr. Smith spoke regarding the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. He asked the Board to abolish the ordinance and to rely on the State of Virginia laws.
Those who commented in favor of the firearm ordinance repeal used the constitutional right to property along with the right to bear arms to justify their position to the board. Findings from public comments confirm expectations that emerged from prior research. Citizens engaged in partisan debates in an effort to convince board members of their position, drawing upon collectivist or individualist frames to orient arguments and persuade elected officials.
Bureaucratic frame: The county sheriff and shifting pro-repeal frames
Until this point, the general public debated partisan ideological tensions, confirming expectations of how a debate about such a politically polarized social issue, such as gun control, might unfold. Each competing party harnessed the appeals internal to individualist and collectivist frames to justify their position. These frames are deeply embedded in American cultural tradition, and often “intractable” ideological ideals (Carlson 2020:189).
However, when the county sheriff was asked to provide expert opinion about the firearm ordinance, an alternative frame and political possibility emerged. 16 The sheriff introduced the bureaucratic frame, an alternative approach to adjudicating participatory debates, which appeals to disembodied abstract rules and procedures rather than partisanship. After his testimony, this frame became dominant for understanding the ordinance debate, expressed in two ways: deference to (bureaucratic) authority opinion and (bureaucratic) redundancy. Until the sheriff’s opinion was made public, the frames of the pro-repeal movement relied solely on politicized, individualist partisan ideology, advocating for individual rights and liberties in an effort to rescind all firearm ordinances.
In June 2010, the sheriff made a public statement in The Press in which he was described as a gun-rights activist and quoted arguing for a repeal of all ordinances. In this quote, he invoked an individualist frame by suggesting that the ordinance was an infringement on individual rights and liberties. This is to be expected, as county sheriffs are often more likely than not to be NRA members themselves and given this membership, much more likely to be against firearm control measures that might limit Second Amendment rights (Thompson et al. 2011). In the sheriff’s public statements at the hearing, however, he relied on a different frame to justify his position, never once calling upon individualist ideals despite that being his public position. At the hearing, he relied instead on the bureaucratic frame to direct the course of action for the ordinance debate. According to the sheriff, the county laws in place were bureaucratically redundant to the laws already established by the state. At the board meetings, he stated the following: “[The Sheriff] stated it was his opinion that 99.9 percent of any kind of potential firearm violation was covered under the state law; and he felt if the Board repealed the ordinance in its entirety, there would be sufficient state law to appropriately resolve almost any situation that might occur in the County.” “[The Sheriff] stated he felt the current ordinance accomplished nothing more than making people feel good, and it penalized those who did have the opportunity to lawfully discharge a firearm on their property.” “[The Sheriff] stated that in the last 10 years no one had been charged for the mere discharge of a firearm. He stated that all charges had either been reckless discharge or some higher offense than mere discharge.”
The sheriff’s frame relied on bureaucratic minutiae: the firearm ordinance was both redundant to state law and unnecessary based on discharge rates over the past 10 years. Such an argument is not necessarily antithetical to an individualist frame because it criticizes excessive regulation. However, the bureaucratic frame more fully veils the politically partisan logic embedded in the individualist framework, while also affirming his public statement about the overreach of local government. 17
After the sheriff’s public statement at the hearing, constituents’ frames shifted from individualist to bureaucratic, effectively redirecting the constituents’ pattern of action. Meanwhile, those in favor of the ordinance expansion maintained their position, appealing to collectivist ideals. Six pro-repeal citizens commented at the July meeting in support of the sheriff’s position. For instance: “Mr. Frederick, expressed his support for [The Sherriff’s] position in that the local ordinance was redundant and confusing. He then endorsed [The Sherriff’s] recommendation to repeal the County’s ordinance on the discharge of firearms. He then encouraged the board to vote in favor of the repeal.”
Mr. Frederick used the sheriff’s bureaucratic authority to justify the repeal while also relying on the bureaucratic frame to argue that the ordinance is redundant. Those who adhere to a gun identity, an identity likely assumed by the vocal anti-ordinance constituents, take cues from gun leaders on how to frame their political actions related to gun values (Lacombe 2019). In this instance, it is possible to see how the public harnessed the frame from a gun rights leader to forward their agenda. Below, I detail how this new frame furthermore influenced the Board of Supervisors, changing the course of their decision.
Shifting Frames, Evading Partisanship: The Board of Supervisors and the Veil of Bureaucracy
There is an important temporal dimension to the frames used by board members, which helps to understand how the collective position and ultimate decision evolved over time. Board members, who were once collectively in favor of the firearm ordinance and its expansion, decided to repeal the ordinance altogether, shifting from a collectivist to bureaucratic frame. This section explains how this happened during the meeting process.
Until 2009, the board members relied on collectivist frames to justify their firearm ordinance position. Until the meeting in May 2009, the board shared the position that firearm discharge restrictions should be made based on public safety and neighborhood preferences. According to the county administrator’s memorandum, the board reached the following consensus regarding potential changes to the firearm discharge in the county: “(1) Retain the current system whereby specific neighborhoods are listed as restricted areas; (2) Prohibit firearms discharges within 1000 feet of County school property; and (3) Prohibit all refile discharges. (4) “The Board directed that staff conduct a public outreach initiative in an effort to determine whether additional neighborhoods/areas are interested in being added to the list of restricted areas. To do so, letters were mailed to homeowners’ association representatives (or other known contacts in the case of neighborhoods without formal HOAs) of residential areas developed since 1994 and not currently listed as a restricted area inviting them to submit a request for inclusion. Approximately twenty (20) neighborhoods were contacted in this manner. Also, a press release was issued to provide a general notice of the Board’s willingness to consider additional areas.”
Embedded in these potential changes are two logics, which are broader collectivist principles: concern for public safety and deference to community decision-making. The board intended to use government intervention to ensure these principles. However, at a hearing in June, board members introduced a new option for the firearm discharge ordinance: a repeal of the ordinance entirely. How did board members shift from encouraging an expansion of the ordinance by relying on a collectivist frame to encouraging a repeal of the ordinance altogether? The answer lies in the board’s collective shift to the bureaucratic frame, the effect of which depoliticizes the ordinance debate while still placating vocal anti-ordinance constituents. After its introduction by the sheriff, board members used the bureaucratic frame to interpret and make decisions about the ordinance debate, expressed through deference to authority and bureaucratic redundancy.
For instance, in explaining his final position, the board’s chairman expressed that the sheriff’s position at the meeting swayed his final decision: “[The] chairman stated he had 10 or 12 guns at his house, and this ordinance never bothered him. He indicated it just stood to reason that if an individual was in a neighborhood with houses, they would not go out there and shoot guns, but instead they would find a place to go and practice or find a place to go hunting. He stated the main reason he changed his mind on firearms restrictions was [The Sherriff’s] position.”
Other board members used the bureaucratic frame to justify a pro-repeal position: the redundancy of county law in relation to state law. “Mr. Sherrod thanked the citizens and [the sheriff] for providing input on this subject. He stated the key factor in his decision was based on the number of accidents involved; and he saw this as an opportunity for [the] County to clean up its books and get an unnecessary code of the books.” “Mr. Holcomb stated that he had studied the County ordinance back to 1975 when the County was a different place. He agreed with Mr. Sherrod that the County had at one time been a lot more rural, and it had a different culture now. He sated these ordinances had been put in place to protect the subdivisions as they started popping up throughout the years. He stated that the culture had changed, and people realized they could not step outside their back doors and start shooting. The homeowners’ associations had been notified, and not many were here tonight. Mr. Holcomb stated no ordinance would prevent criminals from being reckless with firearms no matter what the County put in place, and he felt the county ordinance duplicates state law.”
In these cases, both board members deferred to the bureaucratic frame to support the ordinance repeal, specifically citing its legal redundancy. Even Mr. Sherrod, who was originally concerned with public safety and requested to hear from other neighborhoods to be added to the ordinance expansion list, utilized the bureaucratic frame to support a repeal of the county law. Bureaucracy, then, became a powerful frame in shifting the course of action.
While the general public originally wished to engage in a partisan debate about ideological merits of collectivism and individualism, board members ultimately used bureaucracy to decide the course of action, circumventing the gun debate entirely. Rather than relying on the original arguments set forth by the vocal, anti-ordinance public, the board adopted the bureaucratic frame introduced by the county sheriff to assert their new position. In effect, the board used bureaucracy to depoliticize the partisan debate while still adhering to the vocal, overrepresented anti-ordinance constituents. 18
In this particular civic sphere, depoliticized arguments are deemed more favorable and legitimate by bureaucrats. Institutions often dampen “public-spirited” debates, particularly when constituents are perceived to be speaking for themselves (Eliasoph 1996:269). However, the sheriff, who maintains legal-rational authority within this context, speaks on behalf of something more objective, the state and law, thereby gaining legitimacy within this setting. While bureaucratic legitimacy is likely not a motivating force for vocal anti-ordinance constituents who fought on behalf of Second Amendment rights, such constituents took cues from a gun-rights leader to re-frame their own arguments (Lacombe 2019). In the end, the bureaucratic frame became an important available method by which board members and the sheriff, both elected officials, evaded partisan politics. 19
Conclusion
What explains the repeal of the longstanding firearm ordinance in this rural county in Virginia? And what can this case tell us about how discursive frames influence decision-making processes in other participatory settings? Given its demographic characteristics—rural, white, Republican-leaning—it might be expected that partisan political ideology would explain both the process and outcome of the ordinance repeal. It might also be expected that the arguments of the vocal anti-ordinance constituents would dominate the debate given their overrepresentation in the meeting itself, making provisions for the board to use the arguments of the loudest constituent voice. However, closer inspection at the events that transpired complicates this expectation. While partisan political ideology fueled the debate amongst constituents, who engaged broader collectivist and individualist frames to persuade the board, it was a third, confounding frame that explains the ordinance’s repeal.
The bureaucratic frame proved more discursively influential than either collectivist or individualist appeals. The power of this frame derives from its depoliticization potential. Whoever is best able to employ this frame not only depoliticizes the debate to gain rational legitimacy under the guise of neutrality but can do so in such a way that veils partisanship. In practice, this means board members were, in effect, able to usher in the ideological standards of the vocal anti-ordinance constituents while simultaneously neutralizing and avoiding an impassable politically contentious debate.
Ideological frames do not have universal power but derive power through the actors that use them. In this civic sphere, regardless of the content of the argument, constituents’ appeals are perceived to be made on behalf of themselves (Eliasoph 1996), undermining influence with elected officials. However, in this context, the sheriff is granted rational authority. He is not (perceived to be) making an appeal on behalf of himself, but on behalf of the state and law, a higher bureaucratic order. Because the sheriff is a rational authority figure in a bureaucratic setting with expert knowledge and the ideological frame he introduced is perceived to be depoliticized, his arguments gained more legitimacy in this institutional setting with officials. However, sheriffs are also people with identities and values who bring these identities and values with them into bureaucratic institutions in which their authority is embedded (Hallett and Ventresca 2006). This frame likely gained traction amongst constituents because sheriffs, who are more likely than not to be part of the NRA and oppose firearm legislation, are leaders in the ideological apparatus of gun-rights enthusiasts (Thompson et al. 2011). Given their status in local municipalities (Farris and Holman 2015), it is possible to extrapolate how sheriffs could direct the appropriate course of action for those with a gun identity (Lacombe 2019). 20 Rational authority redirected the board, yet charismatic authority redirected constituents (Weber 1978).
There are important limitations to this research, which derive from this study’s use of meeting minutes as a source of data. It is impossible to know what might have occurred beyond the meeting itself to give this particular frame ascendancy. Indeed, this is a broader limitation of using meetings as an exclusive source of data to understand community processes (Brown-Saracino and Stiman 2017). Meeting minutes are unable to capture the motives, ideologies, or full actions of social actors or how these are negotiated outside of the meeting itself. Therefore, I highlight the de facto consequences of frames and actions within the bounds of the meeting itself. Such limitations generate empirical questions: what is the degree to which actors negotiate these frameworks behind the scenes? What is the degree to which the bureaucratic frame is strategically harnessed to veil partisanship and usher in a political agenda? How do actors themselves understand how frames and structures of authority work in action? Future work could rely on other methods, particularly interviews and ethnography, to better triangulate the meaning, intent, and action of the actors involved in these participatory settings and rule out alternative explanations.
Despite these limitations, this research makes important contributions to research on firearms and participatory democracy. This analysis extends knowledge about how actors negotiate firearm debates in municipal settings, suggesting that binary ideological frameworks are not exhaustive in explaining the gun debate. Future research on firearm use and regulations can attend to community-level participatory settings because this is where decisions are often made that affect public safety. Such research can utilize the competing frameworks discussed in this analysis—collectivist, individualist, and bureaucratic—to understand how firearm laws are made. Attending to ideological frames that are debated, harnessed, and deemed more legitimate by social actors can tell us more about the variable process by which firearm legislation is accomplished at the local level.
These findings have important implications for participatory democracy research, beyond the case of a firearm ordinance debate. It is possible to see how these three frames could be applicable to other politically polarizing debates in civic settings, such as climate change, abortion, immigration, and health care. While constituents may call upon collectivist and individualist frames to support their positions, appeal to a higher order of democracy, and lobby politicians through participatory processes, this analysis underscores how bureaucrats use and manipulate bureaucracy to make and obscure political decisions. Bureaucracy is an ideological tool and framework which depoliticizes highly contentious social issues, allowing bureaucrats to circumvent “public-spirited” debates (Eliasoph 1996:269). Whoever is best able to employ this framework can neutralize any opposing party. In doing so, responsibility can be deflected to a disembodied abstract structure, all while veiling and importing a partisan agenda.
While the bureaucratic frame is itself powerful, it intersects with structures of authority in these institutional spheres, giving the frame more leverage when introduced by a social actor who maintains legal-rational authority. Constituents are often perceived to be speaking on behalf of self-interest, undermining legitimacy within these institutional spheres (Eliasoph 1996). In contrast, bureaucratic figures with expertise are perceived to be speaking on behalf of the roles they occupy, elevating their framing authority to other bureaucrats. Other research in this area can attend to the social actors in these settings who are best able to elevate the bureaucratic frame and analyze the conditions under which their authority prevails.
While this case is limited to a county government participatory setting, these frames can extend to larger stages of representative government, influencing patterns of action in any case of partisan debates. Contentious social issues are not the only divide among and between constituents and lawmakers. Instead, nearly all issues brought to the fore bisect along partisan lines, borne from a steady rise in “affective polarization” (Andris et al. 2015; Iyengar et al. 2019). Therefore, future research can look to how these frames are negotiated in other governmental contexts, even in Congress, and how the bureaucratic frame might be used across a range of political issues to veil partisanship and deflect decision-making responsibility to disembodied abstract rules and structures. Future work can also look to the degree to which this frame is harnessed by each ideological group. I argue in this analysis that individualist, collectivist, and bureaucratic frames are ideal types. However, throughout this particular case, there exists an important intersection between individualist and bureaucratic frames in practice: both criticize government overreach. This suggests that the bureaucratic frame might not be a tool equally employed across the ideological spectrum, but instead might be a frame that more often than not gives power to individualist ideals.
Research on other politically polarizing debates in participatory settings can analyze, not just the loudest and most overrepresented partisan voices, but the process by which actors in these settings use the bureaucratic frame as a means to their political ends. Future research can use this framework to better understand how political debates are adjudicated in participatory settings.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
