Beyond Binaries: Technocracy, Populism and Public Policy

Abstract

Populism is a paradoxical phenomenon that resists easy categorisation because it both rejects and intensifies certain elements of technocracy. Populist politics is at once a backlash against liberal-technocratic ideology and policy and an attempted corrective of some of its worst excesses, such as increasing inequality or pressures on wages. Despite deep differences, both rest on a binary logic that conceals alternatives to the convergence around variants of techno-populism defended by either ‘corporate populists’ or ‘insurgent populists’. One alternative is a public policy programme focused on the building of an economic democracy with more democratic workplaces and a greater emphasis on the dignity of decent jobs, besides policies to reduce regional disparities and foster shared prosperity. But policies alone cannot fully address the deep-seated grievances fuelling the support for populists. Fundamental institutional reform is needed to devolve power and wealth to people and the places where they live and work.

Opposites But Similar? Technocracy and Populism in Contemporary European Democracies

“…An anti-pluralistic element is rooted in these considerations: both the populist people and the technocratic elite tend to become “a total part” (Ragazzoni, 2016), producing an implicit delegitimization of the opposition. Based on the observation of these dynamics, some recent perspectives (Pabst, 2022) have offered a nonbinary interpretation of populism and technocracy, arguing that both phenomena share the underlying political logic and are often mixed in the projects of political actors representing variants of technopopulism, such as what Barnett (2000) called “corporate populists” (those parties and leaders that in the past used direct appeal to the masses to reinforce dominant paradigms such as globalization and free markets, e.g., the Reagan-led Republican Party and Thatcher’s Conservative Party) or the “insurgent populists” (i.e., those actors who, while proposing an illiberal and corporate vision, e.g., the Republican Party under Trump’s leadership and Orbán’s Fidesz, and a radical opposition to liberal élites and political opponents, e.g., Podemos and its leader Iglesias or La France Insoumise led by Mélenchon, often resort to technocratic proposals for problem-solving).…”