Whilst populism and technocracy are increasingly appearing as the two organizing poles of contemporary politics in western democracies, the exact nature of their relationship has not been the focus of systematic attention. In this paper, we argue that whilst these two terms-and the political realities they refer to-are usually as assumed to be irreducibly opposed to one another, there is also an important element of complementarity between them. This complementarity consists in the fact that both populism and technocracy are predicated on an implicit critique of a specific political form, which we refer to here as "party democracy", defining it as a political regime based on two key features: the mediation of political conflicts through the institution of political parties; and a procedural conception of political legitimacy according to which political outcomes are legitimate just to the extent that they are the product of a set of democratic procedures revolving around the principles of parliamentary deliberation and electoral competition. In order to advance this argument, we rely on a close analysis of works by Ernesto Laclau and Pierre Rosanvallon as exemplary manifestations of the contemporary cases for populism and technocracy respectively.

No abstract

The much-discussed crisis of political parties poses a challenge to democratic theorists as institutional designers: how can the capacity of parties to mediate between society and state be resuscitated? In this paper, we suggest that parties need to become more internally deliberative, allowing partisans to debate policy and more general visions for the polity. We outline a prescriptive model of deliberative intra-party democracy, drawing on the empirical literature on the changing structure of civic and political engagement. We argue that deliberative reforms are the most appropriate response to the demands of an increasingly more cognitively mobilized citizenry which seeks self-expression and non-hierarchical forms of political engagement. We highlight the model's distinctive strengths and defend it against several objections.

This article proposes a critique of "militant democracy," defined as the legal restriction of democratic freedoms for the purpose of insulating democratic regimes from the threat of being overthrown by legal means. The argument we advance is that this conceptual framework is inadequate for addressing the problem it is meant to solve, since restricting the freedom of its supposed "enemies" may make democracy more prone to authoritarian abuse, rather than less, in the long run. To demonstrate this, we first turn to the theory of militant democracy, both in its earliest articulations by Karl Loewenstein and Carl Schmitt, and in the more recent theoretical literature on this topic. In the second part, we show that the inherent arbitrariness of militant democracy has been reflected in a concrete expansion in the range of targets to which the logic of militant democracy has been applied: from fascism during the inter-war years, to communism during the Cold War, up to several forms of religious practice in the present day. Those who are for democracy cannot allow themselves to be caught in the dangerous contradiction of using the means of dictatorship to defend democracy. One must remain faithful to one's flag even when the ship is sinking; and in the abyss one can only carry the hope that the ideal of freedom is indestructible, and the more deeply it sinks the more it will one day return to life with greater passion.Hans Kelsen (1932)

This chapter studies populism’s relationship to another phenomenon central to contemporary political life, technocracy. Populism and technocracy are generally understood as opposite trends, one a reaction against the other. The chapter contests this view, arguing that populism and technocracy have a complementary relationship insofar as they share an opposition to two key features of party democracy: political mediation and procedural legitimacy. Having identified shared hostility to party democracy as a point of complementarity between populism and technocracy, the chapter turns to explanations for the rise of populism and technocracy. The chapter finds these explanations in long-term structural transformations in modern party democracy, namely the cartelization of the party political system. The conclusion takes up the policy implications of this analysis. Far from being useful correctives to one another, populism and technocracy should be tackled together as parallel expressions of the same underlying crisis of party democracy.

This article looks at the legacy of ‘Berlusconism’ for Italian politics. On the right, we identify a process of fragmentation. As a result of the personalised leadership of Silvio Berlusconi, where loyalties and ties were to il cavaliere as an individual rather than to a party or a political tradition, there is little by way of legacy on the right. Surprisingly, we find that Berlusconi's greatest legacy lies on the left of Italian politics, in the figure of Matteo Renzi. In his savvy manipulation of the media and in the careful construction of his own image, accompanied by a non‐ideological set of political slogans, Renzi has gone even further than Berlusconi. As a result, he may be the one to final bury Italian ‘party government’ and all its associated traditions and ideals.

It is tempting to see democratic politics today in terms of a contrast between technocracy and populism. One scholar has thus framed a distinction between 'policy without politics' and 'politics without policy' (Schmidt 2006), which echoes an early definition of 'post-truth politics' as 'a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy (the substance of legislation)' (Roberts 2010). This sort of politics simultaneously opens spaces for populist discourse uncoupled from 'facts' and for technocratic policy-making uncoupled from popular accountability. Nadia Urbinati thus highlights 'the codevelopment of populism and epistemic ambitions in government, each fueling the other while both devaluing democratic procedures' (Urbinati 2014, p. 84). Populism is a backlash to technocracy, and technocracy is a backlash to populism. Each justifies itself in terms of the threat it

Résumé Cet article aborde la question du fondement philosophique de la normativité démocratique en la reliant à un débat qui a récemment suscité beaucoup d’intérêt à l’intérieur de la théorie politique : celui autour de la possibilité d’une justification « purement procédurale » du principe de majorité. Dans un livre de plus en plus influent, David Estlund a récemment soutenu qu’une telle justification est en fait impossible, et que la théorie de la démocratie doit donc nécessairement faire appel à un critère de légitimité « épistémique », c’est à dire à un principe de vérité normative indépendant des procédures par lesquelles les décisions politiques sont effectivement prises. À travers une analyse des travaux de Hans Kelsen sur le principe de majorité, nous montrons, dans un premier temps, qu’une justification purement procédurale du principe de majorité est en réalité possible, sans aller à l’encontre des objections soulevées par Estlund contre une telle entreprise. Dans un deuxième temps nous montrons ensuite qu’introduire un critère substantif de vérité normative dans le cadre de la théorie de la démocratie pose en réalité plus de problèmes qu’il ne résout, car c’est en contradiction avec les trois principes fondamentaux sur lesquels s’appuie la légitimité démocratique : une idée de liberté comme consentement, une idée d’égalité comme absence de discrimination entre les opinions individuelles et une idée de pluralisme comme reconnaissance de la légitimité propre au conflit politique.